I always go back to Harry Truman: Should we drop an atomic bomb to save 100,000 lives? That’s a hell of a decision to make. Did he make that decision by himself? No, he had advisers.
The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.
Business, after all, is nothing more than a bunch of human relationships.
You, my friend, alone are equal to a hundred of such friends. Happy Birthday to you.
There are times when even the best manager is like the little boy with the big dog, waiting to see where the dog wants to go so he can take him there.
In business, I loved cars. I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning. Only in America can you decide to get a good education and pursue what you like.
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.