From: My Life and Work
 
It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary
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It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary. To make the giving unnecessary we must look beyond the individual to the cause of his misery – not hesitating, of course, to relieve him in the meantime, but not stopping with mere temporary relief. The difficulty seems to be in getting to look beyond to the causes. More people can be moved to help a poor family than can be moved to give their minds toward the removal of poverty altogether.
words by Henry Ford
 
Whole sections of our population were coddled into a state of helplessness
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Whole sections of our population were coddled into a state of expectant, child-like helplessness. There grew up a regular profession of doing things for people, which gave an outlet for a laudable desire for service, but which contributed nothing whatever to the self-reliance of the people nor to the correction of the conditions out of which the supposed need for such service grew.
words by Henry Ford
 
 
 
A capitalist who gambles with the fruits of other men's labours...
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The man who is a capitalist and nothing else, who gambles with the fruits of other men's labours, deserves all that is said against him. He is in precisely the same class as the cheap gambler who cheats workingmen out of their wages.
words by Henry Ford
 
There is something sacred about a big business
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There is something sacred about a big business which provides a living for hundreds and thousands of families. When one looks about at the babies coming into the world, at the boys and girls going to school, at the young workingmen who, on the strength of their jobs, are marrying and setting up for themselves, at the thousands of homes that are being paid for on installments out of the earnings of men – when one looks at a great productive organization that is enabling all these things to be done, then the continuance of that business becomes a holy trust. It becomes greater and more important than the individuals.
words by Henry Ford
 
Furnishing the world with its trumpery and trinkets
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There is no adequate realization of the large proportion of the labour and material of industry that is used in furnishing the world with its trumpery and trinkets, which are made only to be sold, and are bought merely to be owned – that perform no service in the world and are at last mere rubbish as at first they were mere waste.
words by Henry Ford
 
It is impossible, applying these principles, to avoid making a much larger profit
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Money is useful only as it serves to forward by practical example the principle that business is justified only as it serves, that it must always give more to the community than it takes away, and that unless everybody benefits by the existence of a business then that business should not exist. I have proved this with automobiles and tractors. I intend to prove it with railways and public-service corporations – not for my personal satisfaction and not for the money that may be earned. (It is perfectly impossible, applying these principles, to avoid making a much larger profit than if profit were the main object.)
words by Henry Ford
 
Who should be the stockholders?
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The stockholders, to my way of thinking, ought to be only those who are active in the business and who will regard the company as an instrument of service rather than as a machine for making money.
words by Henry Ford
 
If a business is in excellent condition it is comparatively safe to borrow
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If a man's business is in excellent condition and in need of expansion, it is comparatively safe to borrow. But if a business is in need of money through mismanagement, then the thing to do is to get into the business and correct the trouble from the inside – not poultice it with loans from the outside.
words by Henry Ford
 
Not borrowing money but heavier doses of brains and thought and wise courage
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Money is only a tool in business. It is just a part of the machinery. You might as well borrow 100,000 lathes as $100,000 if the trouble is inside your business. More lathes will not cure it; neither will more money. Only heavier doses of brains and thought and wise courage can cure. A business that misuses what it has will continue to misuse what it can get. The point is – cure the misuse. When that is done, the business will begin to make its own money, just as a repaired human body begins to make sufficient pure blood.
words by Henry Ford
 
Borrowing money and bankers in business
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We are not against borrowing money and we are not against bankers. We are against trying to make borrowed money take the place of work. We are against the kind of banker who regards a business as a melon to be cut.
words by Henry Ford
 
The place to finance a manufacturing business is the shop, and not the bank
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The place to finance a manufacturing business is the shop, and not the bank.
words by Henry Ford
 
The true industrial idea is not to make money
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The true industrial idea is not to make money. The industrial idea is to express a serviceable idea, to duplicate a useful idea, by as many thousands as there are people who need it. To produce, produce; to get a system that will reduce production to a fine art; to put production on such a basis as will provide means for expansion and the building of still more shops, the production of still more thousands of useful things – that is the real industrial idea. The negation of the industrial idea is the effort to make a profit out of speculation instead of out of work.
words by Henry Ford
 
Service, not making money
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Business is good or bad as we make it so. The only reason for growing crops, for mining, or for manufacturing, is that people may eat, keep warm, have clothing to wear, and articles to use. There is no other possible reason, yet that reason is forced into the background and instead we have operations carried on, not to the end of service, but to the end of making money – and this because we have evolved a system of money that instead of being a convenient medium of exchange, is at times a barrier to exchange.
words by Henry Ford
 
Paying good wages is the most profitable way of doing business
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If you expect a man to give his time and energy, fix his wages so that he will have no financial worries. It pays. Our profits, after paying good wages and a bonus – which bonus used to run around ten millions a year before we changed the system – show that paying good wages is the most profitable way of doing business.
words by Henry Ford
 
No rules or laws will effect the changes
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No rules or laws will effect the changes. But enlightened self-interest will. It takes a little while for enlightenment to spread.
words by Henry Ford
 
If men would say: the business ought to be so stimulated...
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If men, instead of saying "the employer ought to do thus-and-so," would say, "the business ought to be so stimulated and managed that it can do thus-and-so," they would get somewhere. Because only the business can pay wages. Certainly the employer cannot, unless the business warrants.
words by Henry Ford
 
What ought the employer to pay?
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"What ought the employer to pay?" – "What ought the employee to receive?" These are but minor questions. The basic question is "What can the business stand?"
words by Henry Ford
 
I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities
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I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible.
words by Henry Ford
 
He never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is
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We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert – because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. 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.
words by Henry Ford
 
We try everything in a little way first
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We try everything in a little way first – we will rip out anything once we discover a better way, but we have to know absolutely that the new way is going to be better than the old before we do anything drastic.
words by Henry Ford
 
It is not the employer who pays wages
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Of course it is not the employer who pays wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages and it is the management that arranges the production so that the product may pay the wages.
words by Henry Ford
 
No manufacturer can say: I built this business
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No manufacturer can say: "I built this business" – if he has required the help of thousands of men in building it. It is a joint production. Everyone employed in it has contributed something to.
words by Henry Ford
 
A principle rather than an individual is at work
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The amount of ground bought and the plans for a bigger factory than the world has ever seen were opposed. The question was already being asked: "How soon will Ford blow up?" Nobody knows how many thousand times it has been asked since. It is asked only because of the failure to grasp that a principle rather than an individual is at work, and the principle is so simple that it seems mysterious.
words by Henry Ford
 
Instead of catering to whims
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Salesmen always want to cater to whims instead of acquiring sufficient knowledge of their product to be able to explain to the customer with the whim that what they have will satisfy his every requirement – that is, of course, provided what they have does satisfy these requirements.
words by Henry Ford
 
Perfect is the enemy of good
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It is strange how, just as soon as an article becomes successful, somebody starts to think that it would be more successful if only it were different. There is a tendency to keep monkeying with styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it.
words by Henry Ford
 
 
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