Quotes from Henry Ford

Strive for minimum waste, minimum profit, maximum distribution.

Progress through cautious, well founded experiments.

The problem with wise people. They always know what is wrong. So I never employ an expert in full bloom.

If you keep a record of all your failures you will soon have a list of everything which cannot be done.

We get some of our best results by letting fools Rush in where angels dear to tread

If a device would save in time 10% or bring about results worth 10% then its absence is worth 10%.

A department is a little factory unto itself with input and output

All that the Ford industries have done—all that I have done—is to endeavour to evidence by works that service comes before profit and that the sort of business which makes the world better for its presence is a noble profession.

The difficulty is not in finding men to advance but men willing to be advanced.

Be not bound by the present, but leave nothing to luck.

Without scientific study, an employer does not know why he is paying a wage and the employee does not know why he is getting it.

Buying ahead of requirements does not pay. Any wins are negated later down the line.

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. An idea is not necessarily good because it is old, or necessarily bad because it is new, but if an old idea works, then the weight of the evidence is all in its favor. Ideas

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

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.

You are not saving when you are taking away from yourself becoming more productive. You are really taking away from your ultimate capital.

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.

Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you are correct.

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.

3. The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted business enterprise cannot fail to return a profit, but profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It cannot be the basis—it must be the result of service.

4. Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and giving it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing, tend only to clog this progression.

given a good idea to start with, it is better to concentrate on perfecting it than to hunt around for a new idea. One idea at a time is about as much as any one can handle.

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

in the beginning there was hardly any one who sensed that the automobile could be a large factor in industry. The