Lee Iacocca Quotations | Page 2

Styling cars sells cars and safety does not.

A country's competitiveness starts not on the factory floor or in the engineering lab. It starts in the classroom.

Life can be difficult for kids born with a gold spoon in their mouth, because they never really get to find out if they're able to work hard and make it on their own.

If you make believe that ten guys in pin-striped suits are back in a kindergarten class playing with building blocks, you'll get a rough picture of what life in a corporation is like.

If your product is great, you yourself do not have to be a great seller.

I've got to get stop getting fired like this. People will start to think I'm a drifter.

MBAs know everything but understand nothing.

I'm sometimes described as a flamboyant leader and a hip-shooter, a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants operator. But if that were true, I could never have been successful in this business.

Every little kid wants to grow up to be a cowboy, and I did.

That's the American way. If little kids don't aspire to make money like I did, what the hell good is this country?

If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.

I don't need a $100 million mistake. Try to make a $5 million mistake if you have to make one.

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.

When future historians look back on our way of curing inflation...they'll probably compare it to bloodletting in the Middle Ages.

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.

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.

I was good friends with Frank Sinatra, I heard Steve Kaufman painting his portrait, so I asked Steve to paint my portrait.

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.

A little righteous anger really brings out the best in the American personality. Our nation was born when 56 patriots got mad enough to sign the Declaration of Independence. We put a man on the moon because Sputnik made us mad at being number two in space. Getting mad in a constructive way is good for the soul- and the country.

There's a billboard in a little farm town in the Midwest that says: IF YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT FARMERS, DON'T TALK WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL.

If I Had To Sum Up In One Word The Qualities That Make Up A Good Manager, I'd Say Decisiveness.

As you go through life, there are thousands of little forks in the road, and there are a few really big forks-those moments of reckoning, moments of truth.

Bad times are indelible. They stay with you forever.

I learned about the strength you can get from a close family life. I learned to keep going, even in bad times. I learned not to despair, even when my world was falling apart. I learned that there are no free lunches. And I learned the value of hard work.

You've got to say, "I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it." It's called perseverance.

The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that matter.

My father used to say, 'You can spend a lot of time making money. The tough time comes when you have to give it away properly.' How to give something back, that's the tough part in life.

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.

Be creative. Use unconventional thinking. And have the guts to carry it out.

If we screw it up, start over. Try something else.

The only mistake I ever made was not listening to my gut.

I was fortunate to get a scholarship when I went to Lehigh University and Princeton. They were both wonderful schools. Somebody was kind enough to spend their money to educate people that they would never get to know. That's what I think philanthropy is about.

What is it that you like doing? If you don't like it, get out of it, because you'll be lousy at it. You don't have to stay with a job for the rest of your life, because if you don't like it you'll never be successful in it.

If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I'd say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.

I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions.

Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late.

Your legacy should be that you made it better than it was when you got it.

Leadership means setting an example. When you find yourself in a position of leadership, people follow your every move.

We load up on oat bran in the morning so we'll live forever. Then we spend the rest of the day living like there's no tomorrow.

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.

A major reason capable people fail to advance is that they don't work well with their colleagues.

To solve big problems you have to be willing to do unpopular things.

Business, after all, is nothing more than a bunch of human relationships.

If you set a good example you need not worry about setting rules.

Listening can make the difference between a mediocre organization and a great one.

Formal learning can teach you a great deal, but many of the essential skills in life are the ones you have to develop on your own.

There's no great mystery to satisfying your customers. Build them a quality product and treat them with respect. It's that simple.

Over the years, many executives have said to me with pride: 'Boy, I worked so hard last year that I didn't take any vacation.' I always feel like responding, "You dummy. You mean to tell me you can take responsibility for an eighty-million-dollar project and you can't plan two weeks out of the year to have some fun?

Don’t just stand there; make something happen.

In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

The right decision is the wrong decision if it's made too late.

The great issues facing us today are not Republican issues or Democratic issues. The political parties can debate the means, but both parties must embrace the end objective, which is to make America great again.

Are we going to be a services power? The double-cheeseburger-hold-the-mayo kings of the world?