Lee Iacocca's Quotes

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

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?

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

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family.

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

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.

Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all those things effectively, you can't miss.

Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make it happen.

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

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

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

I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.

One of the things the government can't do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt.

The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change, the way I see it, is service to a fellow human being.

So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don't sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.

Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can't be two people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get him to inspire his people.

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

The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere.

Every business and every product has risks. You can't get around it.

The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.

I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

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

Any supervisor worth his salt would rather deal with people who attempt too much than with those who try too little.