Iacocca Quotes

“Get all the education you can then go out and do something - do anything.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“It’s a good thing God doesn’t let you look a year or two into the future, or you might be sorely tempted to shoot yourself. But He’s a charitable Lord: He only lets you see one day at a time. When times get tough, there’s no choice except to take a deep breath, carry on, and do the best you can.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“the discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen. In conversation, you can get away with all kinds of vagueness and nonsense, often without even realizing it. But there’s something about putting your thoughts on paper that forces you to get down to specifics. That way, it’s harder to deceive yourself—or anybody else.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“Formal learning can teach you a great deal, but many of the essential skills in life are the ones you have to develop on your own.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“I always kept in mind my father’s warning: “If he’s bigger than you are, don’t fight back. Use your head instead of your fists.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. People come first. Unless you’ve got a good team, you can’t do much with the other two.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“If I had to sum up in one word the qualities that make a good manager, I’d say that it all comes down to decisiveness.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“Mistakes are a part of life; you can’t avoid them. All you can hope is that they won’t be too expensive and that you don’t make the same mistake twice.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“Although I was never a candidate, I learned a lot from all the presidential talk. Shortly after the whole business began, I was having a conversation with a guy in advertising. He said something interesting: “I’ve decided why everybody talks about you as a presidential candidate. It’s very simple. They don’t believe anybody anymore. You talk to them and you make them believe that you stand for something and then you pursue it. You don’t bullshit them, and the American public has been bullshitted too often.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“What the last fifty taught us was the difference between right and wrong, that only hard work succeeds, that there are no free lunches, that you’ve got to be productive. Those are the values that made this country great.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“I discovered that people accept a lot of pain if everybody’s going through the chute together. If everybody is suffering equally, you can move a mountain. But the first time you find someone goofing off or not carrying his share of the load, the whole thing can come unraveled. I call this equality of sacrifice. When I started to sacrifice, I saw other people do whatever was necessary.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“Democratic administration that put people ahead of ideology. Democrats usually do. They deal with labor, they deal with people, they deal with jobs. Republicans deal with trickle-down theories of investment.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“Charlie Beacham used to say that once a guy is over twenty-one, you’ll never really change his style or his habits. You may think you can, but his self-image is locked in. Nobody is ever humble enough to learn after he’s grown up.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“There’s a world of difference between a strong ego, which is essential, and a large ego—which can be destructive. The guy with a strong ego knows his own strengths. He’s confident. He has a realistic idea of what he can accomplish, and he moves purposefully toward his goal. But the guy with a large ego is always looking for recognition. He constantly needs to be patted on the back. He thinks he’s a cut above everybody else. And he talks down to the people who work for him. The”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“But a major reason capable people fail to advance is that they don’t work well with their colleagues.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“What are your objectives for the next ninety days? What are your plans, your priorities, your hopes? And how do you intend to go about achieving them?”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“Beacham used to talk about street smarts, the things you just know, the basic lessons that can’t really be taught. “Remember, Lee,” he would say, “the only thing you’ve got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. That’s the only real advantage we’ve got over the apes. Remember, a horse is stronger and a dog is friendlier. So if you don’t know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream—and a lot of guys don’t—that’s just too bad, because then you can never really make it.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“But engineering no longer interested me. The day I’d arrived, they had me designing a clutch spring. It had taken me an entire day to make a detailed drawing of it, and I said to myself: “What on earth am I doing? Is this how I want to be spending the rest of my life?” I wanted to stay at Ford, but not in engineering. I was eager to be where the real action was—marketing or sales. I liked working with people more than machines.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“The first is whether he’s lazy, and the second is whether he’s got any horse sense. There’s no qualitative analysis to check out whether he’s got some fire in his belly, or whether he will have savvy—or street smarts—when it comes to decision time.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“I began by reducing my own salary to $ 1.00 a year. Leadership means setting an example. When you find yourself in a position of leadership, people follow your every move. I don’t mean they invade your privacy, although there’s some of that, too. But when the leader talks, people listen. And when the leader acts, people watch. So you have to be careful about everything you say and everything you do.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“It’s a good thing God doesn’t let you look a year or two into the future, or you might be sorely tempted to shoot yourself. But He’s a charitable Lord: He only lets you see one day at a time.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“after reaching the presidency I experienced a certain letdown. I had spent years climbing the mountain. When I finally made it to the top, I started to wonder why I had been in such a hurry to get there.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“It seems that in the United States the one thing you can count on is that even during a depression, the rich get richer.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“You can aim at a duck and get it in your sights, but the duck is always moving. In order to hit the duck, you have to move your gun. But a committee faced with a major decision can’t always move as quickly as the events it’s trying to respond to. By the time the committee is ready to shoot, the duck has flown away.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“The trouble with you, Phil, is that you went to Harvard, where they taught you not to take any action until you’ve got all the facts. You’ve got ninety-five percent of them, but it’s going to take you another six months to get that last five percent. And by the time you do, your facts will be out of date because the market has moved on you. That’s what life is all about—timing.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“It looks bad right now, but remember, this too shall pass.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“By their very nature, financial analysts tend to be defensive, conservative, and pessimistic. On the other side of the fence are the guys in sales and marketing—aggressive, speculative, and optimistic. They’re always saying, “Let’s do it,” while the bean counters are always cautioning you on why you shouldn’t do it. In any company you need both sides of the equation, because the natural tension between the two groups creates its own system of checks and balances.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“But McNamara knew more than the actual facts—he also knew the hypothetical ones. When you talked with him, you realized that he had already played out in his head the relevant details for every conceivable option and scenario.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“Setbacks are a natural part of life, and you’ve got to be careful how you respond to them.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography

“It’s a good thing God doesn’t let you look a year or two into the future, or you might be sorely tempted to shoot yourself.”
― Lee Iacocca, Iacocca: An Autobiography