Industrialist Quotes

“Reading musses up my mind.”

“What's right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity - intellect and resources - to do some thing about them.”

“A nation that knows how to work will never suffer.”

“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.”

“Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.”

“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.”

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

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

“I don't like to read books. They muss up my mind.”

“When bankers get into business they usually destroy it.”

“There is joy in work.”

“We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“All Fords are exactly alike, but no two men are just alike. Every new life is a new thing under the sun; there has never been anything just like it before, never will be again. A young man ought to get that idea about himself; he should look for the single spark of individuality that makes him different from other folks, and develop that for all he is worth. Society and schools may try to iron it out of him; their tendency is to put it all in the same mold, but I say don't let that spark be lost; it is your only real claim to importance.”

“If there is unemployment in America, it is because the unemployed do not want to work.”

“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.”

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

“People see successes that men have made and somehow they appear to be easy. But that is a world away from the facts. It is failure that is easy. Success is always hard. A man can fail easily; he can succeed only by paying out all that he has and is.”

“You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.”

“The truth frequently seems unreasonable; the truth frequently is depressing; the truth sometimes seems to be evil, but it has the eternal advantage, it is the truth and what is built thereon neither brings nor yields to confusion.”

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