Lee Iacocca

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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?”

“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.”

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

“In a corporation, there can only be one guy in the end: the CEO.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“I guess that's one achievement I'm really proud of. Saving Chrysler was more than jobs, more than shareholder value. Saving Chrysler was a good idea for the whole country.”

“Trouble shared is trouble halved.”