Henry Ford Quotes

“The more you think, the more time you have.”

“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.”

“The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts.”

“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.”

“Money the root of all evil, unless used for good purpose”

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

“My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or non-resistant principles. It may be that the present state of civilization is such that certain international questions cannot be discussed; it may be that they have to be fought out. But the fighting never settles the question. It only gets the participants around to a frame of mind where they will agree to discuss what they were fighting about.”

“All life is experience, and one level is exchanged for another only when its lesson is learned.”

“To be good is not enough; a man must be good for something”

“History is more or less bunk.”

“Every piece of work in the shops moves. Save 10 steps a day for each of the 12,000 employees, and you will have saved 50 miles of wasted motion and misspent energy.”

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

“As we serve our jobs we serve the world.”

“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.”

“Life is work, and everything you do is so much more experience. Sometimes you work for wages, sometimes not, but what does anybody make but a living? And whatever you have you must either use or lose.”

“I invented nothing new. I simply combined the inventions of others into a car. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.”

“Many persons think that by hoarding money they are gaining safety for themselves. If money is your only hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Without these qualities, money is practically useless. The security even of money depends on knowledge, experience, and ability. If productive ideas are displaced by destructive ideas, economic life suffers.”

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

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

“Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.”

“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.”

“Whatever you resist will persist.”

“When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece. Ford replied,''Produce it anyway.”

“Two percent of the people think; three percent think they think, and 95 percent would rather die than think.”

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

“You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do. It's simple, fantasize, rehearse, then go out into the world and DO IT!”

“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.”

“We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.”

“An Airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”

“An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.”

“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.”

“Thinking is the hardest work we do.”

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

“If you don't think of the future, you won't have one.”

“An educated person, I think, is one who not only knows a lot, but knows how to do a lot of things.”

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

“As a young man, I was very interested in how people lived in earlier times; how they got from place to place, lighted their homes, cooked their meals and so on. So I went to the history books. Well, I could find out all about kings and presidents; but I could learn nothing of their everyday lives. So I decided that history is bunk.”

“Thinking first of money instead of work brings fear.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“A company that does not produce anything other than money is a poor business”

“The cure for materialism is to have enough for everybody and to share. When people are sure of having what they need they cease to think about it.”

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

“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.”

“You don't have to hold a position to be a leader.”

“Without doubt, Thomas Edison is my greatest contemporary.”

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

“There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured.”