Henry Ford

Cutting wages is not the way to recovery. Raise wages and improve the product.

We have had just one main purpose during these years, and that is to give the people transportation of the most dependable quality at the lowest possible cost. Our car was called the Universal Car thirty years ago, because it fulfilled so many needs; it is The Universal Car today for the same reason.

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

The partnership of mind and matter is one which has existed since the beginning of time and cannot be dissolved.

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.

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.

I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

The best way to make money in business is not to think too much about making it.

It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.

I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions.

Everything I do in life is framed through the view of a businessman. That’s my instinct. If I go into a pharmacy to buy shaving cream, then I’m going to look for the best deal on shaving cream.

I have no Napoleonic dream. I’m just hard-working and pragmatic.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

Nations are great as they are prosperous as they are industrious as they are just.

The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.

There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.

Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.

Determine to do some thinking for yourself. Don’t live entirely upon the thoughts of others. Don’t be an automaton.

This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.

A manufacturer is not through with his customer when a sale is completed. He has then only started with his customer. In the case of an automobile the sale of the machine is only something in the nature of an introduction. If the machine does not give service, then it is better for the manufacturer if he never had the introduction, for he will have the worst of all advertisements-a dissatisfied customer.

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