Henry Ford, born in 1863 in Michigan, displayed an early interest in mechanics and at 15, built his first steam engine.
After an apprenticeship in Detroit, Ford worked with Westinghouse steam engines and eventually became chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company.
In 1893, his interest in internal combustion engines led to his first gasoline model and the creation of the Quadricycle in 1896.
Despite initial setbacks, Ford’s ventures culminated in the formation of Ford Motor Company in 1903.
As president and controlling owner, he was key to its success. He was named the Businessman of the Century by Fortune magazine in 1999.
He co-authored books on his industrial and social theories and was awarded several honorary degrees.
Ford passed away in 1947 and is remembered as a pivotal figure in automotive history.
See also: Walt Disney Quotes and Bill Gates Quotes.
Here are the top quotes from Henry Ford to motivate and inspire you.
Best Henry Ford Quotes on Success, Hard Work, Motivation & Inspiration
1. “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” ~ (Henry Ford).
2. “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” ~ (Henry Ford).
3. “Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” ~ (Henry Ford).
4. “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” ~ (Henry Ford).
5. “Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.” ~ (Henry Ford).
6. “Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success.” ~ (Henry Ford).
7. “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” ~ (Henry Ford).
8. “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” ~ (Henry Ford).
9. “Thinking is the hardest thing a man can do, probably the reason so few of them do it.” ~ (Henry Ford).
10. “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.” ~ (Henry Ford).
11. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ~ (Henry Ford).
12. “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” ~ (Henry Ford).
13. “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.” ~ (Henry Ford).
14. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” ~ (Henry Ford).
15. “There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.” ~ (Henry Ford).
16. “Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.” ~ (Henry Ford).
17. “Believe in the best. Have a goal for the best, never be satisfied with less than your best, try your best, and in the long run things will turn out for the best.” ~ (Henry Ford).
18. “One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn’t do.” ~ (Henry Ford).
19. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” ~ (Henry Ford).
20. “If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.” ~ (Henry Ford).
21. “Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.” ~ (Henry Ford).
22. “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.” ~ (Henry Ford).
23. “Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.” ~ (Henry Ford).
24. “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” ~ (Henry Ford).
25. “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” ~ (Henry Ford).
26. “To see a thing clearly in the mind makes it begin to take form.” ~ (Henry Ford).
27. “Vision without execution is just hallucination.” ~ (Henry Ford).
28. “The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right. Which one are you?” ~ (Henry Ford).
Top Henry Ford Quotes
29. “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” ~ (Henry Ford).
30. “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” ~ (Henry Ford).
31. “You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn’t correct. We all start with all there is, it’s how we use it that makes things possible.” ~ (Henry Ford).
32. “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” ~ (Henry Ford).
33. “With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end.” ~ (Henry Ford).
34. “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” ~ (Henry Ford).
35. “Those who walk with God, always reach their destination.” ~ (Henry Ford).
36. “Working together is success.” ~ (Henry Ford).
37. “Those who never make mistakes work for those of us who do.” ~ (Henry Ford).
38. “You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars.” ~ (Henry Ford).
39. “If it doesn’t add value, it’s waste.” ~ (Henry Ford).
40. “Luck and destiny are the excuses of the world’s failures.” ~ (Henry Ford).
41. “A poor man is not the one without a cent. A poor man is the one without a dream.” ~ (Henry Ford).
42. “There are no dead ends. There is always a way out. What you learn in one failure you utilize in your next success.” ~ (Henry Ford).
43. “Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.” ~ (Henry Ford).
44. “You can take my factories, burn up my buildings, but give me my people and I’ll build the business right back again.” ~ (Henry Ford).
45. “The object of education is not to fill a man’s mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking.” ~ (Henry Ford).
46. “Mediocrity is the worst enemy of prosperity.” ~ (Henry Ford).
47. “One who fears failure limits his activities.” ~ (Henry Ford).
48. “There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.” ~ (Henry Ford).
49. “Those who stop marketing to save money are like those who stop a clock to save time.” ~ (Henry Ford).
50. “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.” ~ (Henry Ford).
51. “I’ll sleep well tonight.” ~ (Henry Ford).
52. “Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.” ~ (Henry Ford).
53. “Two percent of the people think; three percent think they think, and 95 percent would rather die than think.” ~ (Henry Ford).
54. “You are the Master of your Fate, the Captain of your Soul.” ~ (Henry Ford).
55. “Old men are always advising young men to save money. That is bad advice. Don’t save every nickel. Invest in yourself. I never saved a dollar until I was forty years old.” ~ (Henry Ford).
56. “Show me who makes a profit from war, and I’ll show you how to stop the war.” ~ (Henry Ford).
57. “Whatever your goal in life, the beginning is knowledge and experience.” ~ (Henry Ford).
58. “Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage. The easiest of all wastes and the hardest to correct is the waste of time, because wasted time does not litter the floor like wasted material.” ~ (Henry Ford).
59. “Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.” ~ (Henry Ford).
60. “An educated man is not one whose memory is trained to carry a few dates in history – he is one who can accomplish things.” ~ (Henry Ford).
Famous Henry Ford Quotes
61. “Anybody can do anything that he imagines.” ~ (Henry Ford).
62. “Improved productivity means less human sweat, not more.” ~ (Henry Ford).
63. “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.” ~ (Henry Ford).
64. “Patience and foresight are the two most important qualities in business.” ~ (Henry Ford).
65. “The object of living is work, experience, happiness.” ~ (Henry Ford).
66. “Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.” ~ (Henry Ford).
67. “I invented nothing new, I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom there were centuries of work.” ~ (Henry Ford).
68. “A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired.” ~ (Henry Ford).
69. “Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this.” ~ (Henry Ford).
70. “Wealth is nothing more or less than a tool to do things with. It is like the fuel that runs the furnace or the belt that runs the wheel – only a means to an end.” ~ (Henry Ford).
71. “When I see an Alfa Romeo go by, I tip my hat.” ~ (Henry Ford).
72. “Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die. But when a business ceases to be creative, when it believes it has reached perfection and needs to do nothing but produce no improvement, no development, it is done.” ~ (Henry Ford).
73. “I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.” ~ (Henry Ford).
74. “To be good is not enough; a man must be good for something.” ~ (Henry Ford).
75. “Gold is the most useless thing in the world. I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is merely a symbol.” ~ (Henry Ford).
76. “Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.” ~ (Henry Ford).
77. “Man minus the Machine is a slave; Man plus the Machine is a freeman.” ~ (Henry Ford).
78. “The human mind is a channel through which things-to-be are coming into the realm of things-that-are .” ~ (Henry Ford).
79. “Paying good wages is not charity at all-it is the best kind of business.” ~ (Henry Ford).
80. “Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage.” ~ (Henry Ford).
81. “There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity.” ~ (Henry Ford).
82. “The short successes that can be gained in a brief time and without difficulty, are not worth much.” ~ (Henry Ford).
83. “The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts.” ~ (Henry Ford).
84. “Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait.” ~ (Henry Ford).
85. “One needs to be successful in a conventional way to learn just how far away from the success it may be.” ~ (Henry Ford).
86. “Every success is the mother of countless others.” ~ (Henry Ford).
87. “Individualism is what makes cooperation worth living.” ~ (Henry Ford).
88. “I was happier when I was doing a mechanic’s job.” ~ (Henry Ford).
89. “If someone betrays you once, it is his fault. If he betrays you twice, it is your fault. Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, they will never cease to be amused. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” ~ (Henry Ford).
90. “The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, immoral, and inhuman.” ~ (Henry Ford).
91. “Any color – so long as it’s black.” ~ (Henry Ford).
92. “Under pressure, the mouth speaks when the brain is disengaged, and, sometimes unwittingly, the gearshift is in reverse when it should be in neutral.” ~ (Henry Ford).
93. “A business which exists to make one man or one family rich, and whose existence is of no moment when this is achieved, is not solidly founded.” ~ (Henry Ford).
94. “Labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth because they take away a man’s independence.” ~ (Henry Ford).
95. “What’s right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity – intellect and resources – to do something about them.” ~ (Henry Ford).
96. “If there is unemployment in America, it is because the unemployed do not want to work.” ~ (Henry Ford).
97. “I will build a car for the great multitude.” ~ (Henry Ford).
98. “To me this is the most beautiful, the most satisfactory from a scientific standpoint, the most logical theory of life. For thirty years I have leaned toward the theory of Reincarnation. It seems a most reasonable philosophy and explains many things.” ~ (Henry Ford).
99. “Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men.” ~ (Henry Ford).
100. “A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.” ~ (Henry Ford).
Inspiring Henry Ford Quotes
101. “There should be no unemployment. There is a large percentage of labor now which cannot make a living because wages are not high enough. That is the industry’s 2nd job. 1st job is to make a good product. 2nd pay a good wage.” ~ (Henry Ford).
102. “Impossible means that you haven’t found a solution yet.”~ (Henry Ford).
103. “If there is anyone secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” ~ (Henry Ford).
104. “Our country is still young and its potential is still enormous. We should remember, as we look toward the future, that the more fully we believe in and achieve freedom and equal opportunity – not simply for ourselves but for others – the greater our accomplishments as a nation will be.” ~ (Henry Ford).
105. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” ~ (Henry Ford).
106. “To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is a success.” ~ (Henry Ford).
107. “Every piece of work in the shops moves. Save 10 steps a day for each of the 12,000 employees, and you will have saved 50 miles of wasted motion and misspent energy.” ~ (Henry Ford).
108. “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” ~ (Henry Ford).
109. “If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.” ~ (Henry Ford).
110. “We do not make changes for the sake of making them, but we never fail to make a change when once it is demonstrated that the new way is better than the old way.” ~ (Henry Ford).
111. “One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.” ~ (Henry Ford).
112. “Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” ~ (Henry Ford).
113. “Every object tells a story if you know how to read it.” ~ (Henry Ford).
114. “Greatest thing in life is experience. Even mistakes have value.” ~ (Henry Ford).
115. “Those who believe they can do something and those who believe they can’t are both right.” ~ (Henry Ford).
116. “Paying attention to simple little things that most men neglect makes a few men rich.” ~ (Henry Ford).
117. “The two most important things in any company do not appear in its balance sheet: its reputation and its people.” ~ (Henry Ford).
118. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.” ~ (Henry Ford).
119. “We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.” ~ (Henry Ford).
120. “You don’t have to hold a position to be a leader.” ~ (Henry Ford).
121. “There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.” ~ (Henry Ford).
122. “Money doesn’t change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that’s all.” ~ (Henry Ford).
123. “The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” ~ (Henry Ford).
124. “It is always possible to do a thing better the second time.” ~ (Henry Ford).
125. “Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?” ~ (Henry Ford).
126. “The farther you look back, the farther you can look ahead.” ~ (Henry Ford).
127. “Education is preeminently a matter of quality, not amount.” ~ (Henry Ford).
128. “Failure is the chance to do it better next time.” ~ (Henry Ford).
129. “There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.” ~ (Henry Ford).
130. “There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.” ~ (Henry Ford).
Henry Ford Quotes for Motivation
131. “The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on.” ~ (Henry Ford).
132. “You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.” ~ (Henry Ford).
133. “Business must be run at a profit, else it will die. But when anyone tries to run a business solely for profit, then also the business must die, for it no longer has a reason for existence.” ~ (Henry Ford).
134. “Too many men are afraid of being fools.” ~ (Henry Ford).
135. “Every time you try to quit smoking you are actually getting closer to staying smokefree.” ~ (Henry Ford).
136. “If I’d listened to customers, I’d have given them a faster horse.” ~ (Henry Ford).
137. “Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.” ~ (Henry Ford).
138. “The gifted man bears his gifts into the world, not for his own benefit, but for the people among whom he is placed; for the gifts are not his, he himself is a gift to the community.” ~ (Henry Ford).
139. “The true measure of a successful leader is their ability to discover the hidden talent in those they lead and challenge them to achieve greatness. If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you are right.” ~ (Henry Ford).
140. “Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost anyone can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.” ~ (Henry Ford).
141. “Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind.” ~ (Henry Ford).
142. “I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.” ~ (Henry Ford).
143. “Businessmen go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all about – men who do not know that yesterday is past, and who woke up this morning with their last year’s ideas.” ~ (Henry Ford).
144. “A customer votes everyday with his dollar. Our job is to make sure he votes for us.” ~ (Henry Ford).
145. “You can do anything if you have enthusiasm.” ~ (Henry Ford).
146. “I believe we are reincarnated. You, I, we reincarnate over and over. We live many lives, and store up much experience. Some are older souls than others and so they know more. It seems to be an intuitive “gift.” It is really hard-won experience.” ~ (Henry Ford).
147. “There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.” ~ (Henry Ford).
148. “It is failure that is easy. Success is always hard.” ~ (Henry Ford).
149. “Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.” ~ (Henry Ford).
150. “The way to learn to do things is to do things. The way to learn a trade is to work at it. Success teaches how to succeed. Begin with the determination to succeed, and the work is half done already.” ~ (Henry Ford).
151. “America is not a land of money but of wealth-not a land of rich people, but of successful workers.” ~ (Henry Ford).
152. “A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.” ~ (Henry Ford).
153. “The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.” ~ (Henry Ford).
Short Henry Ford Quotes
154. “Profit is a by-product of work; happiness is its chief product.” ~ (Henry Ford).
155. “People are as happy as they choose to be.” ~ (Henry Ford).
156. “There is joy in work.” ~ (Henry Ford).
157. “No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between a man and a plot of land.” ~ (Henry Ford).
158. “The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time.” ~ (Henry Ford).
159. “Mark my word: A combination airplane and motor car is coming…” ~ (Henry Ford).
160. “If people understood how the economic system works, there’d be a revolution in a minute.” ~ (Henry Ford).
161. “I invented nothing new. I simply combined the inventions of others into a car. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.” ~ (Henry Ford).
162. “Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.” ~ (Henry Ford).
163. “One of the most difficult things to do in life is thinking; that’s why so few people engage in it.” ~ (Henry Ford).
164. “The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.” ~ (Henry Ford).
165. “Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist and you will sweep war from the earth.” ~ (Henry Ford).
166. “The more you think, the more time you have.” ~ (Henry Ford).
167. “The best way is always the simplest. The attics of the world are cluttered up with complicated failures.” ~ (Henry Ford).
168. “The only motive that can keep politics pure is the motive of doing good for one’s country and its people.” ~ (Henry Ford).
169. “An educated person, I think, is one who not only knows a lot, but knows how to do a lot of things.” ~ (Henry Ford).
170. “There is safety in small beginnings and there is unlimited capital in the experience gained by growing.” ~ (Henry Ford).
171. “Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the ‘expert’ state of mind a great number of things become impossible.” ~ (Henry Ford).
172. “Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.” ~ (Henry Ford).
173. “A big business never becomes big by being a narrow society looking after only the interests of its organization and stockholders.” ~ (Henry Ford).
174. “The only thing you can give a man without hurting him is an opportunity.” ~ (Henry Ford).
175. “The more detailed the plan, the easier the trip.” ~ (Henry Ford).
176. “Anyone who does anything useful will not go unpaid.” ~ (Henry Ford).
177. “The most difficult job is the one that you never get started on.” ~ (Henry Ford).
178. “The great need of the world has always been for leaders. With more leaders we could have more industry. More industry, more employment and comfort for all.” ~ (Henry Ford).
179. “It is the customer that pays the wages.” ~ (Henry Ford).
180. “What we call evil, it seems to me, is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark.” ~ (Henry Ford).
181. “The Jews caused the war, the Jews caused the outbreak of thieving and robbery all over the country, the Jews caused the inefficiency of the navy.” ~ (Henry Ford).
182. “A man’s real education begins after he has left school. True education is gained through the discipline of life.” ~ (Henry Ford).
183. “For most purposes, a man with a machine is better than a man without a machine.” ~ (Henry Ford).
184. “Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease.” ~ (Henry Ford).
185. “If you don’t think of the future, you won’t have one.” ~ (Henry Ford).
186. “Almost all enduring success comes to people after they are forty. For seldom does mature judgment arrive before then.” ~ (Henry Ford).
187. “The most important history is the history we make today.” ~ (Henry Ford).
188. “As we serve our jobs we serve the world.” ~ (Henry Ford).
189. “You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don’t seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.” ~ (Henry Ford).
190. “That the Devil finds work for idle hands to do is probably true. But there is a profound difference between leisure and idleness.” ~ (Henry Ford).
191. “Women do not win formula one races, because they simply are not strong enough to resist the G-forces. In the boardroom, it is different. I believe women are better able to marshal their thoughts than men and because they are less egotistical they make fewer assumptions.” ~ (Henry Ford).
192. “Of course, it is not the employer who pays wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays wages and it is the management that arranges the production so that the product may pay the wages.” ~ (Henry Ford).
193. “A man’s college and university degrees mean nothing to me until I see what he is able to do with them.” ~ (Henry Ford).
194. “The depression was just a state of mind. It is over for everyone who has changed his state of mind.” ~ (Henry Ford).
195. “There is no failure except failure to serve one’s purpose.” ~ (Henry Ford).
196. “The man who is too set to change is dead already. The funeral is a mere detail.” ~ (Henry Ford).
197. “The truth frequently seems unreasonable; the truth frequently is depressing; the truth sometimes seems to be evil, but it has the eternal advantage, it is the truth and what is built thereon neither brings nor yields to confusion.” ~ (Henry Ford).
198. “Do your best every time because by doing a thing well you build something valuable into yourself.” ~ (Henry Ford).
199. “Hard knocks have a place and value, but hard thinking goes farther in less time.” ~ (Henry Ford).
200. “Two classes of people lose money; those who are too weak to guard what they have; those who win money by trick. They both lose in the end.” ~ (Henry Ford).
201. “Disappointment is just the chance to start once more, this time all the more insightfully.” ~ (Henry Ford).
