Lee Iacocca

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.

The one word that makes a good manager – decisiveness.

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

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

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

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