Lee Iacocca Quotes

You can go a long way with some integrity.

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. But He’s a charitable Lord: He only lets you see one day at a time. When times get tough, there’s no choice except to take a deep breath, carry on, and do the best you can.

Beacham used to talk about street smarts, the things you just know, the basic lessons that can’t really be taught. “Remember, Lee,” he would say, “the only thing you’ve got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. That’s the only real advantage we’ve got over the apes. Remember, a horse is stronger and a dog is friendlier. So if you don’t know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream — and a lot of guys don’t — that’s just too bad, because then you can never really make it.

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

Mistakes are a part of life; you can’t avoid them. All you can hope is that they won’t be too expensive and that you don’t make the same mistake twice.

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

Safety doesn’t sell.

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.

With a car, you can go anywhere you want.

But I do think that our national leadership consists of too many lawyers and not enough people from business. I’d like to see a system where we brought in twenty top managers to run the business side of the country and maybe even paid them $1 million a year, tax-free. That would be a real incentive, and then we’d see a lot more talented people interested in public life.

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?

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.

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."

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

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.