Quotes by Henry Ford

Failure is just a resting place. It is an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

History is more or less bunk.

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

Don't find fault, find a remedy.

Change is not always progress. A fever of newness has everywhere been confused with the spirit of progress.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far. The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

There is no man living who isn't capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.

The only prosperity the people can afford to be satisfied with is the kind that lasts.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar is bound to succeed.

When everything seems to be going against you,
remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

Paying good wages is not charity at all-it is the best kind of business.

Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard.

The time will come when man will know even what is going on in the other planets and perhaps be able to visit them.

The most dangerous notion a young man can acquire is that there is no more room for originality. There is no large room for anything else.

Politics in the true sense, have to do with the prosperity, peace and security of the people.

The basically simple things are best, whether it's automobiles or diets or philosophy.

When bankers get into business they usually destroy it.

Those who believe they can do something and those who believe they can't are both right.

I'm looking for a lot of men with an infinite capacity for not knowing what cannot be done.

There's no such thing as no chance.

There is no such thing as no chance.

A customer votes everyday with his dollar. Our job is make sure he votes for us.

Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease.

The great need of the world has always been for leaders. With more leaders we could have more industry. More industry, more employment and comfort for all.

Unless you have courage, a courage that keeps you going,
always going, no matter what happens, there is no
certainty of success. It is really an endurance race.

Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.

When I can't handle events, I let them handle themselves.

The human mind is a channel through which things-to-be are coming into the realm of things-that-are .

Everything can always be done better than it is being done.

Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men.

Three rules: I do not eat too much; I do not worry too much; and, if I do my best, I believe that what happens, happens for the best.

Nothing can be made except by makers, nothing can be managed except by managers. Money cannot make anything and money cannot manage anything.

Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government
take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.

Burdening people with debt is an old deal not a new deal.

Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky.

The boss is not paying you. They just keep the money for you only. New customers who actually paid.

The biggest goal can be achieved if you simply break it down into enough small parts.

There should be no unemployment. There is large percentage of labor now which cannot make a living because wages are not high enough. That is industry's 2nd job. 1st job is to make good product. 2nd pay a good wage.

There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.

Success is a matter of adjusting one's efforts to obstacles and one's abilities to a service needed by others.

A big business never becomes big by being a narrow society looking after only the interests of its organization and stockholders.

Profit is a by-product of work; happiness is its chief product.

Work mixed with management becomes not only easier but more profitable. The time is past when anyone can boast about 'hard work' without having a corresponding result to show for it.

Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance wheel of civilization.

Our country is still young and its potential is still enormous. We should remember, as we look toward the future, that the more fully we believe in and achieve freedom and equal opportunity -- not simply for ourselves but for others -- the greater our accomplishments as a nation will be.

You can take my factories, burn up my buildings, but give me my people and I'll build the business right back again.

Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live.

I found that competition was supposed to be a menace and that a good manager circumvented his competitors by getting a monopoly by artificial means.

Man minus the Machine is a slave; Man plus the Machine is a freeman.

If it is 'anti-Semitism' to say that communism in the United States is Jewish, so be it; but to the unprejudiced mind it will look very much like Americanism. Communism all over the world, not in Russia only, is Jewish.

The best way is always the simplest. The attics of the world are cluttered up with complicated failures.

If someone betrays you once, it is his fault. If he betrays you twice, it is your fault. Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, they will never cease to be amused. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man's back and place it on the broad back of the machine.

To live a great life, you must believe in yourself. Let these quotes help you to create a mindset for believing in yourself... Those who believe they can do something and those who believe they can't are both right.

The way to learn to do things is to do things. The way to learn a trade is to work at it. Success teaches how to succeed. Begin with the determination to succeed, and the work is half done already.

Any decision you make isn't worth a tinkers damn until you have formed the habit of making and keeping it.

If people understood how the economic system works, there'd be a revolution in a minute.

A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired.

An educated man is not one whose memory is trained to carry a few dates in history -- he is one who can accomplish things.

The high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity for work.

If there is one thing I would banish from earth, it is fear. And the only way to do that is to see that there is nothing to fear -- nothing in all of life to be afraid of.

The whole key of the profitable everyday living will be to discover out what's one's future to try and do, and after that do it.

If I lose a billion dollars, I will have it back in less than five years.

Then why flounder around waiting for good business? Get the costs down by better management. Get the prices down to the buying power.

The farther we get away from the land, the greater our insecurity.

Merely gathering knowledge may become the most useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the world? That is the educational test.

That the Devil finds work for idle hands to do is probably true. But there is a profound difference between leisure and idleness.

The only thing you can give a man without hurting him is an opportunity.

Jews have always controlled the business... The motion picture influence of the United States and Canada...is exclusively under the control, moral and financial, of the Jewish manipulators of the public mind.

Surgery for early stage non-small cell lung cancer is standard treatment and is likely curative. Yet, fewer blacks than whites undergo surgery for the disease, leading to a higher mortality rate among blacks with lung cancer.

People can have the Model T in any color -- so long as it's black.

It is regrettable that people think about our monetary system, and of our economic structure, only in times of depression.

When you get a whole country -- as did ours -- thinking that Washington is a sort of heaven and behind its clouds dwell omniscience and omnipotence, you are educating that country into a dependent state of mind which augers ill for the future.

Every man is entitled to make a darn fool of himself at least once in a lifetime.

There is no failure except failure to serve one's purpose.

History's just one darn thing after another.

The Jews caused the war, the Jews caused the outbreak of thieving and robbery all over the country, the Jews caused the inefficiency of the navy.

The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time.

The more you think, the more time you have.

Patience and foresight are the two most important qualities in business.

Money doesn't change men. It merely unmasks them.

The greatest day of my life was the day I married Mrs. Ford.

Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.

I'll sleep well tonight.

One who fears failure limits his activities.

The true measure of a successful leader is their ability to discover the hidden talent in those they lead and challenge them to achieve greatness. If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you are right.

There are no dead ends. There is always a way out. What you learn in one failure you utilize in your next success.

Mr Edison gave America just what was needed at that moment in history. They say that when people think of me, they think of my assembly line. Mr. Edison, you built an assembly line which brought together the genius of invention, science and industry.

To me this is the most beautiful, the most satisfactory from a scientific standpoint, the most logical theory of life. For thirty years I have leaned toward the theory of Reincarnation. It seems a most reasonable philosophy and explains many things.

This company doesn't pay anybody. Only customers can do that. The company merely handles the money.

There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity.

There are two ways of making yourself stand out from the crowd. One is by having a job so big you can go home before the bell rings if you want to. The other is by finding so much to do that you must stay after the others have gone. The one who enjoys the former once took advantage of the latter.

Writing is the only profession where nobody considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. Money is like an arm or a leg; use it or lose it.

Under pressure, the mouth speaks when the brain is disengaged, and, sometimes unwittingly, the gearshift is in reverse when it should be in neutral.

Gold is the most useless thing in the world. I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is merely a symbol.

Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.

He who would really benefit mankind must reach them through their work.

The object of living is work, experience, happiness.

Mediocrity is the worst enemy of prosperity.

Everybody wants to be someplace he ain't.

The workingmen have been exploited all the way up and down the line by employers, landlords, everybody.

Every one knows that insufficient rest and gorging are not good for anyone, either physically or mentally.

I believe we are reincarnated. You, I, we reincarnate over and over. We live many lives, and store up much experience. Some are older souls than others and so they know more. It seems to be an intuitive gift. It is really hard-won experience.

I regarded our progress merely as an invitation to do more -- as an indication that we had reached a place where we might begin to perform a real service.

Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the 'expert' state of mind a great number of things become impossible.

Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?

Mark my word -- A combination airplane and motor car is coming.

New York is a different country. Maybe it ought to have a separate government. Everybody thinks differently, they just don't know what the hell the rest of the United States is.

Businessmen go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot change.

Business men go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all about -- men who do not know that yesterday is past, and who woke up this morning with their last year's ideas.

We do not make changes for the sake of making them, but we never fail to make a change when once it is demonstrated that the new way is better than the old way.

You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn't correct. We all start with all there is, it's how we use it that makes things possible.

Many people miss opportunity because it came disguised in overalls.

We have always found that, if the principles were right, the area over which they were affected did not matter. Size is only a matter of the multiplication table.

It is a striving to attain the best. To throttle it would mean to stop all progress. Certain men do not need to compete. They are pioneers.

History doesn't mean dates and wars and textbooks to me; it means the unconquerable pioneer spirit of man.

Political parties are like poets, born, not made.

The function of the machine is to liberate man from brute burdens, and release his energies to the building of his intellectual and spiritual powers for conquests in the fields of thought and higher action.

The secret of success is to understand the viewpoint of others.

A scatterbrain is one who never has an unspoken thought.

You can do anything if you have enthusiasm.

To lift farm drudgery off flesh and blood and lay it on steel and motors has been my most constant ambition.

These men of many nations must be taught American ways, the English language, and the right way to live.

With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end.

Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.

The most important history is the history we make today.

Show me who makes a profit from war, and I'll show you how to stop the war.

The question who ought to be boss is like who ought to be the tenor in the quartet? Obviously, the man who can sing tunor.

Integrity is crucial for business success -- once you can fake that, you've got it made.

Working together is success.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this.

Those who stop marketing to save money are like those who stop a clock to save time.

Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.

You are the Master of your Fate, the Captain of your Soul.

Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait.

Why should I clutter my mind with general information when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I need?

I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die. But when a business ceases to be creative, when it believes it has reached perfection and needs to do nothing but produce no improvement, no development, it is done.

If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.

Records can be destroyed if they do not suit the prejudices of ruling cliques, lost if they become incomprehensible, distorted if a copyist wishes to impose a new meaning upon them, misunderstood if we lack the information to interpret them. The past is like a huge library, mostly fiction.

Luck and destiny are the excuses of the world's failures.

Labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth because they take away a man's independence.

As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty and special privilege grow.

We now know that anything which is economically right is also morally right. There can be no conflict between good economics and good morals.

Always demanding the best of oneself, living with honor, devoting one's talents and gifts to the benefits of others -- these are the measures of success that endure when material things have passed away.

I was happier when I was doing a mechanic's job.

Anyone who keeps learning stays young.

I didn't get much peace, but I heard in Norway that Russia might well become a huge market for tractors soon.

The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it.

If you make what they need, and sell it at a price which makes possession a help and not a hardship, then you will do business as long as there is business to do. People buy what helps them just as naturally as they drink water.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

Reading musses up my mind.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

You must know all there is to know in your particular field and keep on the alert for new knowledge. The least difference in knowledge between you and another man may spell his success and your failure.

To do more for the world than the world does for you -- that is success.

The only motive that can keep politics pure is the motive of doing good for one's country and its people.

You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do.

Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.

I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.

Any colour -- so long as it's black.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today.

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick you should not take it.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.