Lee Iacocca Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

The affections are like lightning: you cannot tell where they will strike till they have fallen.

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

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

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.

The most successful businessman is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good, and grabs the new just as soon as it is better.

The one word that makes a good manager - decisiveness.

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

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

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

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

There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men.

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

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

We at Chrysler borrow money the old-fashioned way. We pay it back.

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

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

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.

In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product and profits. Unless you've got a good team, you can't do much with the other two.

The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

When the product is right, you don't have to be a great marketer.