I was at Ford for 32 years. I went to Chrysler in 1978, four or five months after I got canned by Henry Ford.
The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.
Business, after all, is nothing more than a bunch of human relationships.
If a guy is over 25 percent jerk, he’s in trouble. And Henry was 95 percent.
In a corporation, there can only be one guy in the end: the CEO.
Chrysler builds great cars.
Any supervisor worth his salt would rather deal with people who attempt too much than with those who try too little.
The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they’re expected to do – they always reach.
I’m still not sure what is meant by good fortune and success. I know fame and power are for the birds. But then life suddenly comes into focus for me. And, ah, there stand my kids.
A country’s competitiveness starts not on the factory floor or in the engineering lab. It starts in the classroom.
The cement in our whole democracy today is the worker who makes $ 15 an hour. He’s the guy who will buy a house and a car and a refrigerator. He’s the oil in the engine.
No matter how I’m doing financially, the Depression has never disappeared from my consciousness. To this day, I hate waste. When neckties went from narrow to wide, I kept all my old ones until the style went back to narrow.
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.
Are we going to be a services power? The double-cheeseburger-hold-the-mayo kings of the world?
Styling cars sells cars and safety does not.
A guy named Charlie Beacham was my first mentor at Ford. He taught me the importance of the dealers, and he rubbed my nose in the retail business.
My father always used to say that when you die, if you’ve got five real friends, then you’ve had a great life.
I learned that monthly payments are the cornerstone of everything in the automobile business.
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.
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.
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.