Henry Ford
An American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company and developed the assembly line technique of mass production.
Most quoted
"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—and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."
— from Statement to his engineers, often quoted as a personal philosophy, 1909
"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."
— from My Life and Work, 1922
"I do not believe in the theory that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I believe that the rich are getting richer because they are working harder and the poor are getting poorer because they are not working hard enough."
— from Attributed
All quotes by Henry Ford (182)
The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.
Paying good wages means not merely increasing a worker's pay; it means increasing his leisure and powers of enjoyment.
Time and money spent in helping men to do more than they are able to do almost always pays big dividends.
A large share of our trouble comes from waste – waste of life, waste of time, waste of opportunity.
Vision without execution is just hallucination.
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.
The greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fall.
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.
I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity for not knowing what can't be done.
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
The most difficult thing is to know yourself.
The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.
The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and what you can do.
Money is an instrument, not an end.
We are not here to fear the future; we are here to shape it.
The only way to do great work is to love what you do.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
The customer can have any color he wants so long as it's black.
Progress is not made by standing still.
Contemporaries of Henry Ford
Other Engineerings born within 50 years of Henry Ford (1863–1947).