My Life And Work Quotes

“There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“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, My Life And Work

“Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“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.”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“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.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“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, My Life and Work

“It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet what else is he?”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“The natural thing to do is to work—to recognize that prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through honest effort.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“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, My Life and Work

“Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“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, My Life And Work

“It is easier to make money from money than it is to make money from business. Don't take the acumen of bankers as any guide for business, all they know is money.”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“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.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“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, My Life And Work

“Speculation into thing already produced that is not business”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“Strive for minimum waste, minimum profit, maximum distribution.”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible. I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“More men are beaten than fail. It is not wisdom they need or money, or brilliance, or "pull," but just plain gristle and bone. This rude, simple, primitive power which we call "stick-to-it-iveness" is the uncrowned king of the world of endeavour. 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.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“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.”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“If you keep a record of all your failures you will soon have a list of everything which cannot be done.”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“1. An absence of fear of the future and of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“Everything can always be done better than it is being done.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“The problem with wise people. They always know what is wrong. So I never employ an expert in full bloom.”
― Henry Ford, My Life And Work

“I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible. The right kind of experience, the right kind of technical training, ought to enlarge the mind and reduce the number of impossibilities. It unfortunately does nothing of the kind. Most technical training and the average of that which we call experience, provide a record of previous failures and, instead of these failures being taken for what they are worth, they are taken as absolute bars to progress. If some man, calling himself an authority, says that this or that cannot be done, then a horde of unthinking followers start the chorus: "It can't be done.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“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.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“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 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.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“I cannot say that it was hard work. No work with interest is ever hard. I always am certain of results. They always come if you work hard enough. But it was a very great thing to have my wife even more confident than I was. She has always been that way.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“Capital that is not constantly making conditions of daily labour better and the reward of daily labour more just, is not fulfilling its highest function. The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more service for the betterment of life. Unless we in our industries are helping to solve the social problem, we are not doing our principal work. We are not fully serving.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“An able man is a man who can do things, and his ability to do things is dependent on what he has in him. What he has in him depends on what he started with and what he has done to increase and discipline it.”
― Henry Ford, My Life and Work

“Advancement begins within the man himself; when he advances from half-interest to strength of purpose; when he advances from hesitancy to decisive directness; when he advances from immaturity to maturity of judgment; when he advances from apprenticeship to mastery; when he advances from a mere dilettante at labour to a worker who finds a genuine joy in work; when he advances from an eye-server to one who can be entrusted to do his work without oversight and without prodding—why, then the world advances!”
― Henry Ford, My LIFE and WORK