Henry Ford Museum Quotes

The first thing I encountered on entering the museum was the earliest steam engine built in England. As I walked on, marveling at each successive mechanical wonder, I realized that I was witnessing the history of machinery, as if on parade, from its primitive beginnings to the present day, in all its complex and astounding elaborations.
Henry Ford's so-called "pile of scrap iron" was organized not only with scientific clarity but with impeccable, unpretentious good taste. Relics of the times associated with each machine were displayed beside it. To me, Greenfield Village, inside and out, was a visual feast. ~ Diego Rivera

From seven in the morning until half past one the next morning
that's quite a record time for a visitor to stay at a museum," [Henry Ford] continued. "It proves that you may be even more interested in mechanics than I am. And you almost have to be a fanatic to compete with me. That's certainly something!" he exclaimed, grinning broad approval of our common bond. ~ Diego Rivera

Henry Ford believed the soul of a person is located in their last breath and so captured the last breath of his best friend Thomas Edison in a test tube and kept it evermore. It is on display at the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit, like Galileo's finger in the church of Santa Croce, but Edison's last breath is an invisible relic. ~ Elizabeth Alexander

There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off. ~ Henry Ford

The Model T blazed the way for the motor industry & started the movement for good roads everywhere. It is still the pioneer car in many parts of the world which are just beginning to be motorized. ~ Henry Ford

Every man starts with all there is. Everything is here-the essence and substance of all there is. ~ Henry Ford

Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. ~ Henry Ford

Thinking is the hardest work we do. ~ Henry Ford

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. ~ Henry Ford

The secret of success is to understand the viewpoint of others. ~ Henry Ford

Our help does not come from Washington, but from ourselves. ~ Henry Ford

Jews have always controlled the business ... The motion picture influence of the United States and Canada ... is exclusively under the control, moral and financial, of the Jewish manipulators of the public mind. ~ Henry Ford

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

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me. ~ Henry Ford

A dollar put into a book and a book mastered might change the whole course of a boy's life. It might easily be the beginning of the development of leadership that would carry the boy far in service to his fellow men. ~ Henry Ford

There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured. ~ Henry Ford

Paying attention to simple little things that most men neglect makes a few men rich. ~ Henry Ford

Every one knows that insufficient rest and gorging are not good for anyone, either physically or mentally. ~ Henry Ford

Education is not something to prepare you for life; it is a continuous part of life. ~ Henry Ford

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services. ~ Henry Ford

The function of the machine is to liberate man from brute burdens, and release his energies to the building of his intellectual and spiritual powers for conquests in the fields of thought and higher action. ~ Henry Ford

Understand the difference between being at work and working. ~ Henry Ford

There was a study done in the early 20th century of all the entrepreneurs who entered the automobile industry around the same time as Henry Ford; there were something like 500 automotive companies that got funded, had the internal combustion engine, had the technology, and had the vision. Sixty percent of them folded within a couple of years. ~ Eric Ries

History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. 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 made today. ~ Henry Ford

If the people really set their minds on anything it is impossible to prevent their getting what they want. ~ Henry Ford

Henry Ford summed it up best. "If I had asked people what they wanted," he said, "they would have said a faster horse." This is the genius of great leadership. Great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can't see. ~ Simon Sinek

We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage. ~ Henry Ford

Most of the present acute troubles of the world arise out of taking on new ideas without first carefully investigating to discover if they are good ideas. An idea is not necessarily good because it is old, or necessarily bad because it is new, but if an old idea works, then the weight of the evidence is all in its favor. Ideas ~ Henry Ford

Every failure is an opportunity to begin again with more information. ~ Henry Ford

Henry, this isn't about us. I mean it is, but they don't define you by the button you wear. They define you by what you do, by what your actions say about you. And coming here, despite your parents, says a lot to them- and me. And they're Americans first. They don't see you as the enemy. They see you as a person. ~ Jamie Ford

Dollars had once gathered like autumn leaves on the wooden collection plates; dollars were the flourishing sign of God's specifically American favor, made manifest in the uncountable millions of Carnegie and Mellon and Henry Ford and Catholina Lambert. But amid this fabled plenty the whiff of damnation had cleared of dollars and cents the parched ground around Clarence Wilmot. ~ John Updike

I determined absolutely that never would I join a company in which finance came before the work or in which bankers or financiers had a part. And further that, if there were no way to get started in the kind of business that I thought could be managed in the interest of the public, then I simply would not get started at all. For my own short experience, together with what I saw going on around me, was quite enough proof that business as a mere money-making game was not worth giving much thought to and was distinctly no place for a man who wanted to accomplish anything. Also it did not seem to me to be the way to make money. I have yet to have it demonstrated that it is the way. For the only foundation of real business is service. ~ Henry Ford

You can get it in any color, as long as it is black ~ Henry Ford

It is regrettable that people think about our monetary system, and of our economic structure, only in times of depression. ~ Henry Ford

Advancement begins within the man himself; when he advances from half-interest to strength of purpose; when he advances from hesitancy to decisive directness; when he advances from immaturity to maturity of judgment; when he advances from apprenticeship to mastery; when he advances from a mere dilettante at labour to a worker who finds a genuine joy in work; when he advances from an eye-server to one who can be entrusted to do his work without oversight and without prodding - why, then the world advances! ~ Henry Ford