Henry Ford

Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right!

— Henry Ford

The question Who ought to be boss? is like as Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet? Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.

— Henry Ford

It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing Prison or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history.

— Henry Ford

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.

— Henry Ford

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

— Henry Ford

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

— Henry Ford

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

— Henry Ford

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.

— Henry Ford

It is not the employer who pays wages -- he only handles the money. It is the product who pays the wages.

— 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.

— Henry Ford

It doesn't matter to me if a man is from Harvard or Sing Sing. We hire the man, not his history.

— Henry Ford

Never complain. Never explain.

— Henry Ford

Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.

— Henry Ford

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.

— Henry Ford

The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them, and then make our plans with confidence.

— Henry Ford

Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy you don't need it. If you are sick you shouldn't take it.

— Henry Ford

If you take all the experience and judgment of men over fifty out of the world, there wouldn't be enough left to run it.

— Henry Ford

Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

— Henry Ford

Don't find fault, find a remedy.

— 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

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.

— Henry Ford

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.

— Henry Ford

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.

— Henry Ford

I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.

— Henry Ford

History is more or less bunk.

— Henry Ford

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

— Henry Ford

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

— Henry Ford

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.

— Henry Ford

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

— Henry Ford

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do to more for the betterment of life.

— Henry Ford

Money is like an arm or leg -- use it or lose it.

— Henry Ford

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.

— Henry Ford

I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.

— Henry Ford

There is no such thing as no chance.

— Henry Ford

There is no man living who isn't capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.

— Henry Ford

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

— Henry Ford

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

— Henry Ford

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

— Henry Ford

When I can't handle events, I let them handle themselves.

— Henry Ford

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.

— Henry Ford

If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.

— Henry Ford

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

— Henry Ford

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.

— Henry Ford

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

— Henry Ford

Many people 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 person can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Without these qualities, money is practically useless.

— Henry Ford

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

— Henry Ford

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

— Henry Ford

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

— Henry Ford

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.

— Henry Ford

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

— Henry Ford

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

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few engage in it.

— Henry Ford

The object of living is work, experience, and happiness. There is joy in work. All that money can do is buy us someone else's work in exchange for our own. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.

— Henry Ford

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

— Henry Ford

People can have the Model T in any colour – so long as it’s black.

— Henry Ford

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 will not be rightly proportioned. Many inventors fail because they do not distinguish between planning and experimenting.

— Henry Ford

People are utterly wrong in their slant upon things. They see the 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 in ease; he can succeed only by paying out all that he has and is. It is this which makes success so pitiable a thing if it be in lines that are not useful and uplifting.

— Henry Ford

Most of us are doing two things--that by which the body is kept alive, and that by which the higher part of our nature lives. We go to the job to pay expenses and then we indulge ourselves in what we like to do and maybe are meant to do. The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what it is one's destiny to do, and then do it.

— Henry Ford

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. . . . I take it for granted that we must work. All that we have done comes as the result of a certain insistence that since we must work it is better to work intelligently and forehandedly; that the better we do our work the better off we shall be.

— Henry Ford

I noticed a tendency among many men in business to feel that their lot was hard--they worked against a day when they might retire and live on an income--get out of the strife. Life to them was a battle to be ended as soon as possible. That was another point I could not understand, for as I reasoned, life is not a battle except with our own tendency to sag with the downpull of "getting settled.". . . 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.

— Henry Ford