Grace Hopper Quotes

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

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.

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

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.

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.

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.

I will build a car for the great multitude.

Henry Ford didn't just create a cheap way of getting away from your in-laws; he basically understood that there was something in us as a culture that wanted to be on the move, that wanted to get out.

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!

One of the most intensely unlikeable figures of the twentieth century, fanatical anti-Semite, enemy of labour unions and proud recipient of medals from Nazi Germany, where Hitler held him in veneration, Henry Ford was also an employer who paid his workers more than his competitors, an innovator who pioneered the assembly line and a visionary whose part in the creation of the twentieth century was so great that Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, prefigured a society whose calendar was divided into BF and AF-Before Ford and After Ford.

The industrial leader of the 20th century was a system-builder. He was a visionary in terms of what could be built; got the capital together; certainly convinced investors that it was possible; and then ran a high-volume production system that would spew out a vast array of almost identical goods and services. They would be changed from time to time; there was research and development, to be sure. But the system was built around production, not innovation.

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

I liken myself to Henry Ford and the auto industry, I give you 90 percent of what most people need.

The genius idea of industrialism was the concept of the Model T: In exchange for something cheap and well-made, we'd forgo unique, lovely design.

The bigness and the economic “power” of the railroad companies did not impede the emergence of the motor car and the airplane.

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.

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.

People can have the Model T in any color – so long as it’s black.

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.

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

In every phase of the automotive industry, certain factors have been more important than all others in relation to the way the automobile has looked. Phase One is really the Ford story. Function and production were the most important considerations. The automobile was an invention, and it looked like one.

With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.

Time passed by. I had furnished steam hammers to the principal foundries in England. I had sent them abroad, even to Russia. At length it became known to the Lords of the Admiralty that a new power in forging had been introduced.

I am inclined to attach some importance to the new system of manufacturing; and venture to throw it out with the hope of its receiving a full discussion among those who are most interestedin the subject.

Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.