Lee Iacocca Quotations

In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.

The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family.

Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all those things effectively, you can't miss.

The most successful businessman is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good, and grabs the new just as soon as it is better.

I was at Ford for 32 years. I went to Chrysler in 1978, four or five months after I got canned by Henry Ford.

I have always found that if I move with seventy-five percent or more of the facts that I usually never regret it. It's the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.

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.

Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can't be two people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get him to inspire his people.

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.

When the product is right, you don't have to be a great marketer.

Decisiveness is the one word that makes a good manager.

The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change, the way I see it, is service to a fellow human being.

To succeed today, you have to set priorities, decide what you stand for.

I have found that being honest is the best technique I can use. Right up front, tell people what you're trying to accomplish and what you're willing to sacrifice to accomplish it.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?

So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don't sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.

The affections are like lightning: you cannot tell where they will strike till they have fallen.

Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make it happen.

My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.

The ability to concentrate and to use time well is everything.

I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.

We at Chrysler borrow money the old-fashioned way. We pay it back.

People want economy and they will pay any price to get it.

Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they'll say, 'God, he said exactly what I was thinking.' And when they begin to respect you, they'll follow you to the death.

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.

If a guy is over 25 percent jerk, he's in trouble. And Henry was 95 percent.

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.

There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men.

The one word that makes a good manager - decisiveness.

In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits.

One of the things the government can't do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.

Any supervisor worth his salt would rather deal with people who attempt too much than with those who try too little.

In a corporation, there can only be one guy in the end: the CEO.

It was emotional when Chrysler sold out to the Germans.

What is wrong with changing your mind because the facts changed? But you have to be able to say why you changed your mind and how the facts changed.

The trick is to make sure you don't die waiting for prosperity to come.

I guess that's one achievement I'm really proud of. Saving Chrysler was more than jobs, more than shareholder value. Saving Chrysler was a good idea for the whole country.

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

Every business and every product has risks. You can't get around it.

I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

I forgot to shake hands and be friendly. It was an important lesson about leadership.

We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?

If you want to make good use of your time, you've got to know what's most important and then give it all you've got.

Chrysler invented rebates, I'm sorry to say. I didn't have anything to do with that. A lot of flaky deals were made in order to give the customer enough cash for a down payment.

I guess I invented extended warranties, because that's all we had to sell at Chrysler in those days.

I was stunned. It was a complete takeover. Chrysler had $12 billion in cash and was stronger at the time and should have bought Daimler.

I gotta tell ya, with our $2.4 billion in profits last year, they gave me a great big bonus. Really, it's almost obscene.

If it hadn't been for Henry Ford's drive to create a mass market for cars, America wouldn't have a middle class today,

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.

He was eccentric. He was no prince in his social attitudes and his politics. But Henry Ford's mark in history is almost unbelievable.

Jason wanted me to be the spokesman for Nissan when he was with them,

I'm here today because our country needs a change in leadership, ... We need a leader who is really dedicated to creating millions of high-paying jobs all across the country.

The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything.

You know, I'm not too sure what you just said. Now everybody gets a great deal.

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

We believe the combination of these two companies will produce very powerful synergies and puts us on a solid platform from which we should be able to realize our full growth potential.

We at Chrysler borrow money the old fashion way. We pay it back.

Boys, there ain't no free lunches in this country. And don't go spending your whole life commiserating that you got the raw deals. You've got to say, "I think that if I keep working at this and want it bad enough I can have it." It's called perseverance.

People say to me, ''You were a roaring success. How did you do it?'' I go back to what my parents taught me. Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make something happen.

Something's got to happen in this town to turn it around, or we're all going down the tubes,

Al Gore's extreme ideas about cars could cost a lot of Michigan families their jobs.

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.

They're going to Orlando, and I'm going to Palm Beach. If it were just me, I wouldn't do this. But because there are eight or nine of us, it makes sense to fly this way.

The biggest mistake in my life was hiring Eaton as chairman without checking him out first, ... I didn't know him and hired the wrong guy, an error of judgment. When you make a bad people choice it hurts a lot of people for a long time.

It was a marriage made in heaven. The ads created a lot of buzz, and sales rose 24.7 percent in July,

If you can find a better car, buy it.

He's just a good kid. I didn't understand half the things he was telling me, but it was fun.

I learned that monthly payments are the cornerstone of everything in the automobile business.

You can't have a country or a city or a state that's worth a damn unluss you govern within yourself in your day-to-day life.

A good deal is a state of mind.

It pains me to see my old company, which has meant so much to America, on the ropes. But Chrysler has been in trouble before, and we got through it, and I believe they can do it again. [...] Let's face it, if your car breaks down, you're not going to take it to the White House to get fixed. But, if your company breaks down, you've got to go to the experts on the ground, not the bureaucrats.

Most people are looking for security, a nice, safe, prosperous future. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's called the American Dream.

There's a world of difference between a strong ego, which is essential, and a large ego-which can be destructive.

Greenmail, in case you're wondering, is when a company pays a raider a premium for his holdings-if he'll go away. What I think it really is is blackmail in a pin-striped suit.

In the old days, if a neighbors apples fell into your yard, you worked it out over the back fence or picked them up and made pies. Today, you sue.

I'd really love to meet the guy I'm supposed to be. I'd hire him in a second.

Never rest on your oars as a boss. If you do, the whole company starts sinking.

Thanks to properly selecting the clients you will not be unnecessarily wasting time.

Chrysler builds great cars.

Here's what management is about: Pick good people and set the right priorities.

Here's what we should be doing. We've got to get off fossil fuels.

From what I've seen, you either get grounded in that kind of positive thinking early on in life or you don't. Establishing priorities and using your time well aren't things you can pick up at the Harvard Business School. 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.

They're on you day and night. Their oversight is just too extreme [. . .] That's why our 10-year loan, we paid it back in three years. We couldn't stand the government. The bureaucracy kills you.

Incompetency begets incompetency. The last thing a guy who isn't sure of himself wants is a guy backing him up who is sure of himself.

If you own up to your mistakes, you don't suffer as much. But that's a tough lesson to learn.

In the great undertakings, there is glory, even in failure.

They've got about as many lawyers as we have sumo-wrestlers.

Why is our free-enterprise system so strong?- Not because it stands still, frozen in the past, but because it has always adapted to changing realities

There are times in everyone's life when something constructive is born out of adversity... when things seem so bad that you've got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it.

People want economy, and they'll pay any price to get it.

Get all the education you can then go out and do something - do anything.

Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they'll say,"God, he said exactly what I was thinking." And when they begin to respect you, they'll follow you to the death.

The primary skill of a manager consists of knowing how to make assignments and picking the right people to carry out those assignments

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.

In business, you're trying to make a buck. God was good to me and blessed me. I made some money and started this foundation years ago, and it has grown in size. With the foundation it's a lot different, because the bottom line isn't how you can make more money or get a better return, it's helping the projects that you feel strongly about move forward.

You, my friend, alone are equal to a hundred of such friends. Happy Birthday to you.