Lee Iacocca Quotes

You can aim at a duck and get it in your sights, but the duck is always moving. In order to hit the duck, you have to move your gun. But a committee faced with a major decision can’t always move as quickly as the events it’s trying to respond to. By the time the committee is ready to shoot, the duck has flown away.

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

But McNamara knew more than the actual facts — he also knew the hypothetical ones. When you talked with him, you realized that he had already played out in his head the relevant details for every conceivable option and scenario.

I’ve always felt that a manager has achieved a great deal when he’s able to motivate one other person. When it comes to making the place run, motivation is everything. You might be able to 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.

I always kept in mind my father’s warning: “If he’s bigger than you are, don’t fight back. Use your head instead of your fists.

after reaching the presidency I experienced a certain letdown. I had spent years climbing the mountain. When I finally made it to the top, I started to wonder why I had been in such a hurry to get there.

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.

We were on a joyride, on free energy almost. [...] It seems to me we need something like the Manhattan Project. We need some urgency saying, "Here's what we should be doing. We've got to get off fossil fuels."

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?

I began by reducing my own salary to $ 1.00 a year. Leadership means setting an example. When you find yourself in a position of leadership, people follow your every move. I don’t mean they invade your privacy, although there’s some of that, too. But when the leader talks, people listen. And when the leader acts, people watch. So you have to be careful about everything you say and everything you do.

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

But a major reason capable people fail to advance is that they don’t work well with their colleagues.

What are your objectives for the next ninety days? What are your plans, your priorities, your hopes? And how do you intend to go about achieving them?

Why don’t we pass a law that says when you borrow money to buy somebody else and cannibalize him, the interest payments on those loans are not deductible? That would get the excesses out of the system pretty fast. Right now, if you want to buy up a competitor, generally you can’t. That would violate the antitrust laws. But if you want to buy a company that does something else entirely, that’s okay. Where’s the sense in that?

Democratic administration that put people ahead of ideology. Democrats usually do. They deal with labor, they deal with people, they deal with jobs. Republicans deal with trickle-down theories of investment.