Henry Ford (1863–1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. He was the founder of Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production.
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| Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right. ― Henry Ford |
Here is a collection of Henry Ford most famous quotes: Henry Ford quotes about thinking, wealth, quality, work, money, wages, workers, cars, progress, dreams, success, action and business. Quotes and sayings on life, education, ideas, experience, success, failure, opportunity, reputation and thinking by Henry Ford.
Henry Ford Quotes and Sayings
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.
Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick you should not take it.
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
History is more or less bunk.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Don't find fault, find a remedy.
I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
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| Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. ― Henry Ford |
Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.
When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
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.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.
If money is your 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.
Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.
Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
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.
One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn't do.
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.
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| Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. ― Henry Ford |
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.
Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.
Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
There is no man living who isn't capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.
The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it.
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.
You can't learn in school what the world is going to do next year.
As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
Education is preeminently a matter of quality, not amount.
The short successes that can be gained in a brief time and without difficulty, are not worth much.
Nothing can be made except by makers, nothing can be managed except by managers. Money cannot make anything and money cannot manage anything.
Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.
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 that person's angle as well as from your own.
The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
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| My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me. ― Henry Ford |
Two classes of people lose money; those who are too weak to guard what they have; those who win money by trick. They both lose in the end.
When people are "stung" in false investment schemes there are three causes; greed of something for nothing; sheer inability to know their mind; or infantile trustfulness.
The remains of the old must be decently laid away; the path of the new prepared. That is the difference between Revolution and Progress.
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.
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.
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
To do more for the world than the world does for you - that is success.
A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.
Most people think that faith means believing something; oftener it means trying something, giving it a chance to prove itself.
It is regrettable that people think about our monetary system, and of our economic structure, only in times of depression.
The only prosperity the people can afford to be satisfied with is the kind that lasts.
Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.
Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necesary to a worthwhile achievement.
If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.
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| If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself. ― Henry Ford |
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.
There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.
We are here for experience, and experience is a preparation to know the Truth when we meet it.
Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far.
Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.
There is no failure except failure to serve one's purpose.
Money doesn't make us anyway it just unmasks us.
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.
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.
I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.
You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader.
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.
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.
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| Quality means doing it right when no one is looking. ― Henry Ford |
I am looking for a lot of men who have and infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.
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.
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.
Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
Money doesn't change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that's all.
Money is like an arm or leg - use it or lose it.
Experience is the thing of supreme value.
It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.
That the Devil finds work for idle hands to do is probably true. But there is a profound difference between leisure and idleness.
Sometimes you just don't like somebody.
It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet what else is he?
Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist, and you will sweep war from the earth.
To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
As we serve our jobs we serve the world.
Don't find fault. Find a remedy.
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| The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. ― Henry Ford |
Being greedy for money is the surest way not to get it, but when one serves for the sake of service—for the satisfaction of doing that which one believes to be right—then money abundantly takes care of itself.
It ought to be the employer's ambition as leader to pay than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman's ambition to make it possible.
The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debt.
Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live.
History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. 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 made today.
Life, as I see it, is not a location, but a journey. Even the man who most feels himself "settled" is not settled — he is probably sagging back. Everything is in flux, and was meant to be. Life flows. We may live at the same number of the street, but it is never the same man who lives there.
The young people got me interested in aviation. It is part of the motor age. Development is dependent on power.
Greatest thing we can produce is character. Everything else can be taken from us, but not our character.
You've got to teach youngsters the difference between right and wrong, but you shouldn't try to poke it down their throats. Let them ask the questions and then give them the answers.
What America needs most is aviation.
If we had more justice there would be less need of charity.
The only thing you can give a man without hurting him is an opportunity.
Look beyond the individual to the cause of his misery. Philanthropy ought to be productive.
I can visualize the time when almost every family will have a small plane in their back yard.
Faith without action is delusion. Faith does not wait for miracles but produces them. If you think you can or if you think you can't, you are right.
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| When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. ― Henry Ford |
Everybody wants to be someplace he ain't.
A man's real education begins after he has left school. True education is gained through the discipline of life.
There are two kinds of people: Those who think they can, and those who think they can't, and they're both right.
Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage.
Every failure is an opportunity to begin again with more information.
Public officials are all right if they stay in their proper sphere and perform their proper functions but when they get greedy for wider scope and more power and money they lose their value and become parasites.
Don't cheapen the product; don't cheapen the wage; don't overcharge the public. Put brains into the method, and more brains, and still more brains—do things better than ever before; and by this means all parties to business are served and benefited.
How soon will Ford blow up? Nobody knows how many thousand times it has been asked since. It is asked only because of the failure to grasp that a principle rather than an individual is at work, and the principle is so simple that it seems mysterious.
If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don't have it.
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
That the earth produces, or is capable of producing, enough to give decent sustenance to everyone—not of food alone, but of everything else we need. For everything is produced from the earth.
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.
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't—you're right.
More men are beaten than fail. It is not wisdom they need or money, or brilliance, or "pull," but just plain gristle and bone.
The only true test of values, either of men or of things, is that of their ability to make the world a better place in which to live.
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| Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. ― Henry Ford |
Will a billion dollars solve that sort of trouble? No, a billion dollars will only make the difficulty one billion dollars worse.
Suppression of progress plays into the hands of the social enemy. Every advance in social justice establishes the nation.
Trouble with the world today is people don't go to children enough. I don't like old people. I stay away from them.
The way out of the depression is to start spending and doing things.
There should be rivalry between men and between business.
A man's college and university degrees mean nothing to me until I see what he is able to do with them.
Competition is the lifeblood of industry.
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more service for the betterment of life.
Let every American become steeled against coddling. Americans ought to resent coddling. It is a drug. Stand up and stand out; let weaklings take charity.
Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance wheel of civilization.
I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.
Progress through cautious, well founded experiments.
And when a man is really at work, he needs no title. His work honours him.
The problem with wise people. They always know what is wrong. So I never employ an expert in full bloom.
Whether you think you can, or think you can't, you are right.
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| If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. ― Henry Ford |
The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.
Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars.
Any man can learn anything he will, but no man can teach except to those who want to learn.
Most of the present acute troubles of the world arise out of taking on new ideas without first carefully investigating to discover if they are good ideas.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
A man ought to be able to live on a scale commensurate with the service that he renders.
The natural thing to do is to work—to recognize that prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through honest effort. Human ills flow largely from attempting to escape from this natural course.
Thinking calls for facts; facts are found by digging; but he who has gathered this wealth is well equipped for life.
Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost any one can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.
Our modern industrialism, changed to motives of public service, will provide means to remove every injustice that gives soil for prejudice.
Business is never as healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching for what it gets.
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.
Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard.
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.
It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary.
We abolished every order blank and every form of statistics that did not directly aid in the production of a car. We had been collecting tons of statistics because they were interesting. But statistics will not construct automobiles—so out they went.
Old men are always advising young men to save money. That is bad advice. Don't save every nickel. Invest in yourself.