13 quotes
Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.
My Life and Work (1922)
Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
My Life and Work (1922)
Bankers play far too great a part in the conduct of industry...
My Life and Work (1922)
The average successful banker is by no means so intelligent and resourceful a man as is the average successful business man. Yet the banker through his control of credit practically controls the average business man.
My Life and Work (1922)
Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.
My Life and Work (1922)
The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed.
My Life and Work (1922)
As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow.
My Life and Work (1922)
The economic fundamental is labour.
My Life and Work (1922)
The people are on the side of sound money. They are so unalterably on the side of sound money that it is a serious question how they would regard the system under which they live, if they once knew what the initiated can do with it.
My Life and Work (1922)
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.
My Life and Work (1922)
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.
My Life and Work (1922)
The bankers who do straight banking should regard themselves as naturally the first men to probe and understand our monetary system—instead of being content with the mastery of local banking-house methods; and if they would deprive the gamblers in bank balances of the name of "banker" and oust them once for all from the place of influence which that name gives them, banking would be restored and established as the public service it ought to be, and the iniquities of the present monetary system and financial devices would be lifted from the shoulders of the people.
My Life and Work (1922)
The banker is, as I have noted, by training and because of his position, totally unsuited to the conduct of industry. If, therefore, the controllers of credit have lately acquired this very large power, is it not to be taken as a sign that there is something wrong with the financial system that gives to finance instead of to service the predominant power in industry? It was not the industrial acumen of the bankers that brought them into the management of industry.
My Life and Work (1922)