Richard Rodriguez Quotes

When Henry Ford founded the company bearing his name in 1903, he saw the car as a means of providing freedom of mobility to people around the world.

We've always loved the automobile, and we all love Henry Ford's original vision to open the highways to all mankind, the freedom and movement.

There has always been at each decisive period of the world’s history some voice, some note, that represented … prevailing power …. And now finally, there was heard in the streets the murmur of the newest and most perfect of forces, the automobile, rushing along at the rate of 25 miles and hour.

… an ideology on wheels

The greatness of the Erie Canal is the American equal only of its equality and liberty.

With his Model T, Henry Ford affected the world more than any other man in 1500 years.

When I spend a lot of time in New York, or somewhere when I don't have a car, I miss that mobility and freedom that you have when you have a car. You don't have to rely on anyone else.

We're just getting started. We're just beginning to meet what will be the future-we've got the Model T.

I like driving. A lot. I think that's something I just enjoy the most. I can, at a moment's notice, drive across the country if, you know, I had to.

There is a great demand everywhere in the world for individual mobility. People like the fact they are not on somebody else's schedule. They can come and go as they please.

I came into the world at the same time as the auto, if you will.

The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad.

Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.

I will build a motorcar for the great multitude. It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one.

Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean.

The bicycle freed 19th-century women from their homes and from their dependence on men. I hope that in Saudi Arabia, the car will do the same.

Mobility will be one of the major beneficiaries of population growth in the world.

All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.

The moving van is a symbol of more than our restlessness, it is the most conclusive evidence possible of our progress.

A lot of guys have had a lot of fun joking about Henry Ford because he admitted one time that he didn't know history. He don't know it, but history will know him. He has made more history than his critics ever read.

In the 18th century, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, and Richard Arkwright pioneered the water-propelled spinning frame which led to the mass production of cotton. This was truly revolutionary. The cotton manufacturers created a whole new class of people - the urban proletariat. The structure of society itself would never be the same.

Tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life.

If I were to ask the famous Henry Ford to come over here and do what I tell him to do, would he do it? Never! But if I were to make a thousand-year-old corpse come alive before his eyes, he would jump at the chance to stay here and wash my clothes!

The automobile, practical since 1906, was proceeding to disintegrate and stamp anew the pattern of communication, manners, and city life in the United States, by 1918; before long, men would begin to see that the automobile, and the mass production techniques which made its possible, could alter the national character and morality more thoroughly than could the most absolute of tyrants. As a mechanical Jacobin, it rivaled the dynamo. The productive process which made these vehicles cheap was still more subversive of the old ways than was the gasoline engine itself.

In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.