My Life and Work - Henry Ford  ## Metadata - Author: **Henry Ford** - Full Title: My Life and Work - Category: #books ## Highlights - An absence of fear of the future and of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jktq5jxzdenmfhpk2amac9g1)) - 2. A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another man—criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition of one’s fellow man—to rule by force instead of by intelligence. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jktq5tjg7h3taqa0sarb7c6j)) - The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted business enterprise cannot fail to return a profit, but profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It cannot be the basis—it must be the result of service. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jktq5zx5a55sj1jhfwcw3et7)) - Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and giving it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing, tend only to clog this progression. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jktq64kwhvqyr23zmjvjq5dt)) - The whole thought was to make to order and to get the largest price possible for each car. The main idea seemed to be to get the money. And being without authority other than my engineering position gave me, I found that the new company was not a vehicle for realizing my ideas but merely a money-making concern—that did not make much money. In March, 1902, I resigned, determined never again to put myself under orders. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkts9c10qbe5jevmwvzr1b7k)) ## New highlights added February 12, 2025 at 7:59 AM - Not only is a title often injurious to the wearer, but it has its effect on others as well. There is perhaps no greater single source of personal dissatisfaction among men than the fact that the title-bearers are not always the real leaders. Everybody acknowledges a real leader—a man who is fit to plan and command. And when you find a real leader who bears a title, you will have to inquire of someone else what his title is. He doesn’t boast about it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkxb589jmapmmqx05jyms3pg)) - Men of a more mechanical turn of mind, but with no desire for responsibility, go into the tool-making departments where they receive considerably more pay than in production proper. But the vast majority of men want to stay put. They want to be led. They want to have everything done for them and to have no responsibility. Therefore, in spite of the great mass of men, the difficulty is not to discover men to advance, but men who are willing to be advanced. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkxbr93yerexp5e5ggvph21w)) ## New highlights added February 13, 2025 at 6:59 AM - The question is entirely reasonable, but it is a little curious that it should be asked. For when were men ever really put out of work by the bettering of industrial processes? The stage-coach drivers lost their jobs with the coming of the railways. Should we have prohibited the railways and kept the stage-coach drivers? Were there more men working with the stage-coaches than are working on the railways? Should we have prevented the taxicab because its coming took the bread out of the mouths of the horse-cab drivers? How does the number of taxicabs compare with the number of horse-cabs when the latter were in their prime? The coming of shoe machinery closed most of the shops of those who made shoes by hand. When shoes were made by hand, only the very well-to-do could own more than a single pair of shoes, and most working people went barefooted in summer. Now, hardly any one has only one pair of shoes, and shoe making is a great industry. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkzwv0rjqn7k7m4nbdpk9jtm)) - No, every time you can so arrange that one man will do the work of two, you so add to the wealth of the country that there will be a new and better job for the man who is displaced. If whole industries changed overnight, then disposing of the surplus men would be a problem, but these changes do not occur as rapidly as that. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkzwvkf3sw7gh63ba253es3h)) ## New highlights added February 14, 2025 at 5:41 AM - I have no patience with professional charity, or with any sort of commercialized humanitarianism. The moment human helpfulness is systematized, organized, commercialized, and professionalized, the heart of it is extinguished, and it becomes a cold and clammy thing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jm2ag5ves3r5fjhn4hwz4dgh))