William Clay Ford Jr. Quotes

We purchase goods from abroad because they are obviously better or cheaper than the goods we have at home …. It’s basically a choice of the American people of what we want to do with our purchasing power.

When you offer consumers choice, let them vote with their wallets.

I'd never buy something, even if it's a great brand, that is a competitor to something I already own; that's insane.

In my book, 'Let Patients Help,' one chapter is titled 'Let patients vote on what's worth the cost.' That's sensible, right? In other industries, consumer preference is a key determinant in prices.

Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers - not governments - to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.

When consumers do not take full advantage of efficiency gains, it is because they are weighing other factors that influence their decision making. When the federal government arbitrarily places one of those factors over others, it makes consumers worse off.

Everything I do in life is framed through the view of a businessman. That's my instinct. If I go into a pharmacy to buy shaving cream, then I'm going to look for the best deal on shaving cream.

We need to leave to the market and society what they can do well.

Buying involves decision-making. It's a performance activity, like sports or acting.

The free market is fundamentally humane and democratic, driven by ideas and millions of individual choices about what to do with our money which defy those who benefit from the status quo.

I think that, in the end, the consumer's going to win on the Internet.

The consumers are merciless. They never buy in order to benefit a less efficient producer and to protect him against the consequences of his failure to manage better. They want to be served as well as possible. And the working of the capitalist system forces the entrepreneur to obey the orders issued by the consumers.

The industry cannot long offer unneeded or overpriced insurance if people will not buy it.

Do not get yourself into the illusion that there is something so unique about the question of organ or body parts ... that the general rules of economics do not apply.

The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the consumers. They by their buying and by their abstention from buying decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses.

Those who satisfy the wants of a smaller number of people only collect fewer votes-dollars-than those who satisfy the wants of more people.

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.

The development of capitalism consists in everyone having the right to serve the consumer better or more cheaply.

Our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. We allocate resources not by government. decision but by the millions of decisions customers make when they go into the market. place to buy. If something seems too high-priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it's better than any other that's ever been tried.

When you get down to the meat and potatoes of genuine capitalism, it is cutthroat, vicious competition, and the consumer always benefits in the end.

What is called 'capitalism' might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.

It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.

The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers.

If testing costs more than not testing, then don't test.

I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want.