The Henry Ford Quotes & Sayings

If you hope to be independent when there is money, you'll never reach it. On this world, humans can only safely have the knowledge, experience and ability — Henry Ford

Come ye thankful people, come, Raise the song of Harvest-home! — Henry Ford

The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed. — Henry Ford

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. — Henry Ford

Edsel is the artist in our family. Art is something I know nothing about. — Henry Ford

You can't learn in school what the world is going to do next year. — Henry Ford

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. — Henry Ford

As I witness and participate in our visionary efforts to revitalize Detroit and contrast them with the multibillion dollars' worth of megaprojects advanced by politicians and developed that involve casinos, giant stadiums, gentrification, and the Super Bowl, I am saddened by their shortsightedness. At the same time I rejoice in the energy being unleashed in the community by our human-scale programs that involve bringing the country back into the city and removing the walls between schools and communities, between generations, and between ethnic groups. And I am confident just as in the early twentieth century people came from around the world to marvel at the mass production lines pioneered by Henry Ford, in the twenty-first century they will be coming to marvel at the thriving neighborhoods that are the fruit of our visionary programs. — Grace Lee Boggs

One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again. — Henry Ford

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

There is no reason why a man who is willing to work should not be able to work and to receive the full value of his work. There is equally no reason why a man who can but will not work should not receive the full value of his services to the community. He should most certainly be permitted to take away from the community an equivalent of what he contributes to it. If he contributes nothing he should take away nothing. He should have the freedom of starvation. We — Henry Ford

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. — Henry Ford

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

Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. — Henry Ford

If I were to ask the famous Henry Ford to come over here and do what I tell him to do, would he do it? Never! But if I were to make a thousand-year-old corpse come alive before his eyes, he would jump at the chance to stay here and wash my clothes! — Meher Baba

A story tells of Henry Ford's buying scrapped Ford cars and having his engineers disassemble them to see which parts failed and which were still in good shape. Engineers assumed this was done to find the weak parts and make them stronger. Nope. Ford explained that he wanted to find the parts that were still in good shape. The company could save money if they redesigned these parts to fail at the same time as the others. — Donald A. Norman

Krandall had recently done a paper entitled "The Decline of Ford's Market Share," a serious, pessimistic warning that he had reason to believe had never reached Henry Ford. So Krandall, who was thinking of retiring anyway, seized this opportunity to confront a boss he rather liked. The Ford Company, he told Ford, was not equipped to deal with the Japanese challenge. Not only was it doing poorly, he said, but it might not be able to hold its existing share in the future. Krandall had suspected a short, testy answer, but instead Ford looked at him and agreed. "It may not be long," he said, "before we're selling not just cars but apples. — David Halberstam

Pure science is a myth: Both mathematical theoreticians like Albert Einstein and practical crackpots like Henry Ford dealt with different aspects of the same world. — Edward Abbey

We've been told that Henry Ford never fired employees but shifted them around until he found the niche that was right for them. A — Peg Dawson

There is safety in small beginnings and there is unlimited capital in the experience gained by growing. — Henry Ford

Wanda was one of the sighers and moaners, the omigod-I-never-dreamed-it-could-be-like-this-types. When she wasn't purring with cinematic sincerity, she was a warm and giving bedmate with the full complement of womanly slopes and curves and warm, tender places. Sometime around dawn, she told me I looked like Harrison Ford. Or was it Henry Ford? — Paul Levine

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

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. — Henry Ford

If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead. — Adam Haslett

I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense. — Henry Ford

Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out
they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less. — Henry Ford

A dollar put into a book and a book mastered might change the whole course of a boy's life. It might easily be the beginning of the development of leadership that would carry the boy far in service to his fellow men. — Henry Ford

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do. — Henry Ford

Failure is the opportunity to begin again, only more intelligently. — Henry Ford

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? — Henry Ford

There are a million boys growing up in the United States who have never seen a saloon, and who will never know the handicap of liquor and this excellent condition will go on spreading over the country when the wet press and the paid propogandists of booze are forgotten. The abolition of the commercialized liquor trade in this country is as final as the abolition of slavery. — Henry Ford

Today Americans living below the poverty line are not just light-years ahead of most Africans; they're light-years ahead of the wealthiest Americans from just a century ago. Today 99 percent of Americans living below the poverty line have electricity, water, flushing toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television; 88 percent have a telephone; 71 percent have a car; and 70 percent even have air-conditioning. This may not seem like much, but one hundred years ago men like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among the richest on the planet, but they enjoyed few of these luxuries. — Peter H. Diamandis

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. — Henry Ford

The two most important things in any company do not appear in its balance sheet: its reputation and its people. — Henry Ford

You take all the experience and judgment of men over 50 out of the world and there wouldn't be enough left to run it. — Henry Ford

Our clothing, our food, our household furnishings - all could be much simpler than they now are and at the same time be better looking — Henry Ford

One of the most intensely unlikeable figures of the twentieth century, fanatical anti-Semite, enemy of labour unions and proud recipient of medals from Nazi Germany, where Hitler held him in veneration, Henry Ford was also an employer who paid his workers more than his competitors, an innovator who pioneered the assembly line and a visionary whose part in the creation of the twentieth century was so great that Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, prefigured a society whose calendar was divided into BF and AF-Before Ford and After Ford. — Stephen Fry

A poor man is not the one without a cent. A poor man is the one without a dream. — Henry Ford

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

The time is coming when man will be able to determine the length of his lifespan by controlling his diet. — Henry Ford

The more you think, the more time you have. — Henry Ford

At that point the child is eligible for adoption and can be placed with a family that can love the child and can raise the child. — Henry Ford

Have you ever heard the expression 'one hot mess?' I think the term was custom-made for the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. — Henry Rollins

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. — Henry Ford

Until Henry Ford saw the chance to get free publicity (making Sub-chasers) he thought submarines were something to eat. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Could Henry Ford produce the Book of Kells? Certainly not. He would quarrel initially with the advisability of such a project and then prove it was impossible. — Flann O'Brien

I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one ... — Henry Ford

In the current [Carter] administration, who can use the White House swimming pool and tennis courts is decided at the very highest level. President Ford did not bother himself with such minor details. He let me swim in the pool. He only got upset when I tried to walk across the water. — Henry A. Kissinger

Many inventors fail because they do not distinguish between planning and experimenting. The — Henry Ford

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

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. — Henry Ford

The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few. — Henry Ford

Man minus the Machine is a slave; Man plus the Machine is a freeman. — Henry Ford

Don't find the fault, find the remedy — Henry Ford

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. — Henry Ford

FORD SAID, "I'LL BELT THE EARTH WITH DEPENDABLE MOTOR CARS," AND HE DID! His decision to trust his own judgment has already piled up a fortune far greater than the next five generations of his descendents can squander. For the benefit of those seeking vast riches, let it be remembered that practically the sole difference between Henry Ford and a majority of the more than one hundred thousand men who work for him, is this
FORD HAS A MIND AND CONTROLS IT, THE OTHERS HAVE MINDS WHICH THEY DO NOT TRY TO CONTROL. — Napoleon Hill

This kind of inequality - a level we haven't seen since the Great Depression - hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity - that's why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It's also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run. — Barack Obama

A man ought to be able to live on a scale commensurate with the service that he renders. — Henry Ford

The more detailed the plan, the easier the trip. — Henry Ford

You can't tell me you can make any system or country work with low wages and high prices, and high wages with high prices don't mean anything when the prices eat up the wages and don't leave anything over. — Henry Ford

I do not believe in diversification. Take a close look at
some of the greatest entrepreneurs in U.S. history. Henry Ford never
diversified; Bill Gates didn't diversify. I strongly believe that the best
way to create real wealth is to put one's eggs in one basket and watch
that basket (the right one) very carefully. In fact, one can go broke
diversifying. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off. — Henry Ford

2. A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another man - criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition of one's fellow man - to rule by force instead of by intelligence. — Henry Ford

If you think you can, or if u think you can't.. Either way ur correct ... It's the thinking that makes it so. — Henry Ford

Henry was learning that time apart has a way of creating distance- more than mountains and time zone separating them. Real distance, the kind that makes you ache and stop wondering. Longing so bad that it begins to hurt to care so much. — Jamie Ford

What we call evil, it seems to me, is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark. — Henry Ford

At least we have the record, Henry thought. A reminder of a place where people didn't seem to care what you looked like, where you were born, or where your family was from. When the music played, it didn't seem to make one lick of difference if your last was Abernathy or Anjoy, Kung or Kobayashi. — Jamie Ford

An underpaid man is a customer reduced in purchasing power. He cannot buy. Business depression is caused by weakened purchasing power. Purchasing power is weakened by uncertainty or insufficiency of income. The cure of business depression is through purchasing power, and the source of purchasing power is wages. — Henry Ford

Henry Ford, in a sense, was the first Keynesian. He paid his assembly workers high wages so they could afford to buy his cars. — Robert Kuttner

The short successes that can be gained in a brief time and without difficulty, are not worth much. — Henry Ford

You hate the very source of your life, it's ultimate basis - for there's no denying it, 'sex is fundamental. And you hate it, hate it.' 'Me?' It was a novel accusation. Spandrell was accustomed to hearing himself blamed for his excessive love of women and the sensual pleasures. 'Not only you. All these people.' With a jerk of his head he indicated the other diners. 'And all the respectable ones too. Practically everyone. It's the disease of modern man. I call it Jesus's disease on the analogy of Bright's disease. Or rather Jesus's and Newton's disease; for the scientists are as much responsible as the Christians. So are the big business men, for that matter. It's Jesus's and Newton's and Henry Ford's disease. Between them, the three have pretty well killed us. Ripped the life out of our bodies and stuffed us with hatred.' Rampion — Aldous Huxley

The first qualification for success in my view is a strong work ethic. — Henry Ford II

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. — Henry Ford

I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. 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 damn is the history we make today. — Henry Ford

During the 1920s the market for automobiles changed slowly and subtly. Henry Ford's slogan for the Model T - "It takes you there and brings you back" - epitomized the original attraction of the car as a mode of basic transportation. In 1921, more than half of all cars sold in the United States were Fords. But — Andrew S. Grove

Mediocrity is the worst enemy of prosperity. — Henry Ford

What his son, Marty, never fully understood was that deep down there was an Ethel-shaped hole in Henry's life, and without her, all he felt was the draft of loneliness, cold and sharp, the years slipping away like blood from a wound that never heals. — Jamie Ford

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. — Henry Ford

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 — Henry Ford

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

The more Henry though about the shabby old knickknacks, the forgotten treasures, the more he wondered if his own broken heart might be found in there, hidden among the unclaimed possessions of another time. Boarded up in the basement of a condemned hotel. Lost, but never forgotten. — Jamie Ford

The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market. They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people
they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. — Henry Ford

As we serve our jobs we serve the world. — Henry Ford

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

That is the way I have always worked. I draw a plan and work out every detail on the plan before starting to build. For otherwise one will waste a great deal of time in makeshifts as the work goes on and the finished article will not have coherence. It — Henry Ford

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

( ... )the question of the Jews has come to the fore, but like other questions which lend themselves to prejudice, efforts will be made to hush it up as impolitic for open discussion. If, however, experience has taught us anything it is that questions thus suppressed will sooner or later break out in undesirable and unprofitable forms. — Henry Ford

Ford didn't know what to do with Mister Roberts that wasn't repeating what was successful in New York. He was trying to do things to the play that would be his in the film. — Henry Fonda

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. — Henry Ford

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. — Henry Ford

Every success is the mother of countless others. — Henry Ford

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. — Henry Ford

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. — Henry Ford

You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. Enthusiasm is the spark in your eye, the swing in your gait, the grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of your will and your energy to execute your ideas. Enthusiasts are fighters, they have fortitude, they have strong qualities. Enthusiasm is at the bottom of all progress. With it there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis. — Henry Ford

Musk's vision, and, of late, execution seem to combine the best of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. With — Ashlee Vance

Steve Jobs was the greatest manufacturer of consumer products of his age. His marketing vision put him on par with Henry Ford, and his grasp of the aesthetic component to industrial design far surpassed Ford's. — Timothy Noah

No two men are just alike. Every new life is a new thing under the sun; there has never been anything like it before, and never will be again. — Henry Ford

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

Every man starts with all there is. Everything is here-the essence and substance of all there is. — Henry Ford

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement. — Henry Ford