William Clay Ford, Jr. Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by William Clay Ford, Jr.:
I think the world is filled with so much hype and PR bull. Frankly, it all comes out in the end. Good or bad, I'd rather just let our accomplishments really speak for themselves.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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We took our eye off the ball as a company.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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The Ford Motor Co. should stand for something more than cars and trucks. There is a Ford way of doing things that we cannot lose... We need to be continuously polishing that Ford oval.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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My father didn't push me.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I don't ever want to believe my own press clippings, good or bad.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I used to wonder if running a large industrial company would really square with my values.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I'm not motivated by money or power or fame. In the end, it doesn't bring much happiness. The only thing that is driving me is self-satisfaction, self-validation.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I look at safety as, you know, there's active and passive. Passive is how do you survive a crash. Active is accident avoidance. And so that's real-time information to you, as a driver, and to your car, to the wheels of a car that will get you out of a bad situation.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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The Ford family wants the company to succeed. Period.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I walked in and inherited a management group that I didn't know very well. They didn't know me, and we had a very short window to put together a credible recovery plan.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Manufacturing still has the greatest multiplier effect, in terms of job creation, of any sector of the economy.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I never wanted Ford to be a place, like the tobacco industry, where our employees were not proud of coming to work for us. I felt there was a danger of that, should we be marginalized as a major polluter.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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My great-grandfather was a man of great vision, drive, and native intelligence, with some human flaws amplified by limited education, limited social range, and questionable influence from some of his advisers.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I was an absolutely untalented designer.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I don't want anybody, whether it's my grandchildren or any of our employees' grandchildren, to have to apologise for working for Ford Motor Company. In fact, I want the opposite. I want them to look and say, 'What a difference we made!'
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Cars will talk to each other and the world around them to make driving both safer and more efficient. 'Vehicle-to-vehicle' and 'vehicle-to-infrastructure' connectivity will become commonplace.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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My father was a great business leader and humanitarian who dedicated his life to the company and the community. He also was a wonderful family man, a loving husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him, yet he will continue to inspire us all.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I don't know if a company can have a soul, but I like to think it can.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Lewis Booth and Derrick Kuzak represent the very best of Ford and our culture and built a legacy of leadership, integrity and commitment to excellence that will benefit us for years to come.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Just think in terms of green energy and how much time, money, brain power and policy action has started to pour into green energy, and I think that's wonderful. We're going to need that same kind of effort towards global gridlock if we're going to keep the individual mobility that we all take for granted today.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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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.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Nature is where my heart is.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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S.U.V.'s are under a lot of scrutiny these days, and yet the S.U.V. buyer is a very loyal lot.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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As the technology is developed, autonomous driving could provide driving opportunities for the physically challenged or enable the elderly to continue driving longer. This will be vital as many nations experience an aging population.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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There are almost no limits in terms of what a car can become.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Nobody's irreplaceable, including me. I think for too long we've had a cult of personality in this company and in this industry, and frankly, I'd like to see that diminish.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I believe fuel cells could end the 100-year reign of the internal combustion engine.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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One of the things I've had the advantage of, growing up and being close to the top management of this company and other companies for most of my life, is seeing how CEOs start to believe in their own infallibility. And that really scares me.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Lyft is enabling an exciting new model of freedom and personal mobility, as evidenced by its millions of satisfied users.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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You can take weight out of a car and truck and still make it very strong.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I think I was the first executive to ever speak at a Greenpeace business conference, in London in 2001. That didn't play well here at Ford, but I thought it was an important signal to send internally, that these were the kind of issues we needed to be grappling with.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Individuals and companies that want to be successful in the 21st century will need to be leaders in using the Internet and related technology.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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There's a rising tide of environmental awareness and activism among consumers that's going to continue to swell in the 21st century. Smart companies will get ahead of that wave and ride it to success and prosperity. Those that don't are headed for a wipeout.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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At Ford Motor Company, we believe the arts speak a common language that weaves a common thread among all people.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Long commutes and traffic jams once associated with older, established cities such as London, New York or Tokyo are spreading throughout the world's emerging economies.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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The day will come when the notion of car ownership becomes antiquated. If you live in a city, you don't need to own a car.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Whenever I'm at a party, people are always telling me either to get a new quarterback or make the Taurus back seat bigger.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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As long as gas is cheaper than bottled water, we can't be in a position of dictating to the consumer what to buy.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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All things being equal, I think people would still prefer to do business with their hometown companies. That's true in America, that's true in China, that's true in Germany.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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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.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I don't care where you are in the world, people are aware of what technology is available to others. If you're in Nairobi, you're certainly aware of the iPhone.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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The climate is changing, and anyone who disagrees is, in my view, still in denial.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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When I joined Ford, in the late 1970s, I felt strongly we could not forever be a huge user of natural resources without there being consequences. But I was alone in my thinking in those days.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I believe very strongly that corporations could and should be a major force for resolving social and environmental concerns in the twenty-first century.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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Ford comes first before everything else I do in my life.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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What cooler way to grow up for an American boy than to be around cars and football?
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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One cannot find a healthy economy anywhere in the world that does not have a strong industrial base, period.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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There are people who think I'm a Bolshevik, and this is all a major distraction at best and heresy at worst. But I really don't care.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I bleed Ford blue.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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When we're in a peak, we make a ton of money, and as soon as we make a ton of money, we're desperately looking for a way to spend it. And we diversify into areas that, frankly, we don't know how to run very well.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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In the time of the robber barons, my great grandfather insisted on reinvesting and sharing profits with workers... He was told he was a socialist, that he was not welcome on Wall Street.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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I have no patience for wasting time.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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It's hard to store natural gas. And it does require big storage tanks. So it doesn't work very well on passenger cars.
~William Clay Ford, Jr.
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