To Lee Iacocca Quotes

#1. I always go back to Harry Truman: Should we drop an atomic bomb to save 100,000 lives? That's a hell of a decision to make. Did he make that decision by himself? No, he had advisers.

Lee Iacocca

#2. People want economy, and they'll pay any price to get it.

Lee Iacocca

#3. I'd really love to meet the guy I'm supposed to be. I'd hire him in a second.

Lee Iacocca

#4. I was good friends with Frank Sinatra, I heard Steve Kaufman painting his portrait, so I asked Steve to paint my portrait.

Lee Iacocca

#5. To solve big problems you have to be willing to do unpopular things.

Lee Iacocca

#6. If your product is great, you yourself do not have to be a great seller.

Lee Iacocca

#7. There's no great mystery to satisfying your customers. Build them a quality product and treat them with respect. It's that simple.

Lee Iacocca

#8. You can't have a country or a city or a state that's worth a damn unluss you govern within yourself in your day-to-day life.

Lee Iacocca

#9. The only mistake I ever made was not listening to my gut.

Lee Iacocca

#10. The great issues facing us today are not Republican issues or Democratic issues. The political parties can debate the means, but both parties must embrace the end objective, which is to make America great again.

Lee Iacocca

#11. Thanks to properly selecting the clients you will not be unnecessarily wasting time.

Lee Iacocca

#12. In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits.

Lee Iacocca

#13. The primary skill of a manager consists of knowing how to make assignments and picking the right people to carry out those assignments

Lee Iacocca

#14. It's a good thing god doesn't let you look a year or two into the future, or you might be sorely tempted to shoot yourself.

Lee Iacocca

#15. What is wrong with changing your mind because the facts changed? But you have to be able to say why you changed your mind and how the facts changed.

Lee Iacocca

#16. I have always found that if I move with seventy-five percent or more of the facts that I usually never regret it. It's the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.

Lee Iacocca

#17. I don't need a $100 million mistake. Try to make a $5 million mistake if you have to make one.

Lee Iacocca

#18. I forgot to shake hands and be friendly. It was an important lesson about leadership.

Lee Iacocca

#19. Real leaders like Lee Iacocca see vast possibilities and sell their dreams to their companies, their employees, their funding sources, their government and their buying public.

Mark Victor Hansen

#20. The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they're expected to do - they always reach.

Lee Iacocca

#21. In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.

Lee Iacocca

#22. We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?

Lee Iacocca

#23. Lee Iacocca, who said to Dolly Parton, Why do you need an airbag? Never got a dinner!

Red Buttons

#24. I was fortunate to get a scholarship when I went to Lehigh University and Princeton. They were both wonderful schools. Somebody was kind enough to spend their money to educate people that they would never get to know. That's what I think philanthropy is about.

Lee Iacocca

#25. Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they'll say, 'God, he said exactly what I was thinking.' And when they begin to respect you, they'll follow you to the death.

Lee Iacocca

#26. I learned about the strength you can get from a close family life. I learned to keep going, even in bad times. I learned not to despair, even when my world was falling apart. I learned that there are no free lunches. And I learned the value of hard work.

Lee Iacocca

#27. Why is our free-enterprise system so strong?- Not because it stands still, frozen in the past, but because it has always adapted to changing realities

Lee Iacocca

#28. Formal learning can teach you a great deal, but many of the essential skills in life are the ones you have to develop on your own.

Lee Iacocca

#29. My father used to say, 'You can spend a lot of time making money. The tough time comes when you have to give it away properly.' How to give something back, that's the tough part in life.

Lee Iacocca

#30. As far as I'm concerned, the first business leader who was able to establish a cult of personality around his tenure was Lee Iacocca.

Tom Peters

#31. Sometimes you just don't like somebody

Henry Ford

#32. When future historians look back on our way of curing inflation ... they'll probably compare it to bloodletting in the Middle Ages.

Lee Iacocca

#33. Chrysler invented rebates, I'm sorry to say. I didn't have anything to do with that. A lot of flaky deals were made in order to give the customer enough cash for a down payment.

Lee Iacocca

#34. Every little kid wants to grow up to be a cowboy, and I did.

Lee Iacocca

#35. The ability to concentrate and to use time well is everything.

Lee Iacocca

#36. If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I'd say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.

Lee Iacocca

#37. I guess I invented extended warranties, because that's all we had to sell at Chrysler in those days.

Lee Iacocca

#38. Be creative. Use unconventional thinking. And have the guts to carry it out.

Lee Iacocca

#39. If you want to make good use of your time, you've got to know what's most important and then give it all you've got.

Lee Iacocca

#40. If I Had To Sum Up In One Word The Qualities That Make Up A Good Manager, I'd Say Decisiveness.

Lee Iacocca

#41. If you own up to your mistakes, you don't suffer as much. But that's a tough lesson to learn.

Lee Iacocca

#42. The trick is to make sure you don't die waiting for prosperity to come.

Lee Iacocca

#43. Are we going to be a services power? The double-cheeseburger-hold-the-mayo kings of the world?

Lee Iacocca

#44. In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.

Lee Iacocca

#45. My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.

Lee Iacocca

#46. Life can be difficult for kids born with a gold spoon in their mouth, because they never really get to find out if they're able to work hard and make it on their own.

Lee Iacocca

#47. Here's what we should be doing. We've got to get off fossil fuels.

Lee Iacocca

#48. You've got to say, "I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it." It's called perseverance.

Lee Iacocca

#49. I was at Ford for 32 years. I went to Chrysler in 1978, four or five months after I got canned by Henry Ford.

Lee Iacocca

#50. To succeed today, you have to set priorities, decide what you stand for.

Lee Iacocca

#51. In 1964, when Lee Iacocca said, 'Shelby, I want you to make a sports car out of the Mustang,' the first thing I said was, 'Lee, you can't make a race horse out of a mule. I don't want to do it.' He said, 'I didn't ask you to make it; you work for me.'

Carroll Shelby

#52. I have found that being honest is the best technique I can use. Right up front, tell people what you're trying to accomplish and what you're willing to sacrifice to accomplish it.

Lee Iacocca

#53. In business, I loved cars. I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning. Only in America can you decide to get a good education and pursue what you like.

Lee Iacocca

#54. I've got to get stop getting fired like this. People will start to think I'm a drifter.

Lee Iacocca

#55. You, my friend, alone are equal to a hundred of such friends. Happy Birthday to you.

Lee Iacocca

#56. No matter how I'm doing financially, the Depression has never disappeared from my consciousness. To this day, I hate waste. When neckties went from narrow to wide, I kept all my old ones until the style went back to narrow.

Lee Iacocca

#57. That's the American way. If little kids don't aspire to make money like I did, what the hell good is this country?

Lee Iacocca

#58. People want economy and they will pay any price to get it.

Lee Iacocca

#59. A major reason capable people fail to advance is that they don't work well with their colleagues.

Lee Iacocca

#60. There are times when even the best manager is like the little boy with the big dog, waiting to see where the dog wants to go so he can take him there.

Lee Iacocca

#61. It was emotional when Chrysler sold out to the Germans.

Lee Iacocca

#62. There are times in everyone's life when something constructive is born out of adversity ... when things seem so bad that you've got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it.

Lee Iacocca

#63. No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?

Lee Iacocca

#64. I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions.

Lee Iacocca