Lee Iacocca Quotes

36 Sourced Quotes

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

Lee Iacocca
The great issues facing us today are not Republican issues or Democratic issues. The political parties can debate the means, but both parties must embrace the end objective, which is to make America great again.

Lee Iacocca
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.

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

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

Lee Iacocca
We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic.

Lee Iacocca
It pains me to see my old company, which has meant so much to America, on the ropes. But Chrysler has been in trouble before, and we got through it, and I believe they can do it again. [...] Let's face it, if your car breaks down, you're not going to take it to the White House to get fixed. But, if your company breaks down, you've got to go to the experts on the ground, not the bureaucrats.

Lee Iacocca
The cement in our whole democracy today is the worker who makes $ 15 an hour. He's the guy who will buy a house and a car and a refrigerator. He's the oil in the engine.

Lee Iacocca
There's a world of difference between a strong ego, which is essential, and a large ego-which can be destructive.

Lee Iacocca
I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions.

Lee Iacocca
A country's competitiveness starts not on the factory floor or in the engineering lab. It starts in the classroom.

Lee Iacocca
No matter how I'm doing financially, the Depression has never disappeared from my consciousness. To this day, I hate waste. When neckties went from narrow to wide, I kept all my old ones until the style went back to narrow.

Lee Iacocca
As you go through life, there are thousands of little forks in the road, and there are a few really big forks-those moments of reckoning, moments of truth.

Lee Iacocca
I'm sometimes described as a flamboyant leader and a hip-shooter, a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants operator. But if that were true, I could never have been successful in this business.

Lee Iacocca
There are times in everyone's life when something constructive is born out of adversity... when things seem so bad that you've got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it.

Lee Iacocca
When future historians look back on our way of curing inflation...they'll probably compare it to bloodletting in the Middle Ages.

Lee Iacocca
If I Had To Sum Up In One Word The Qualities That Make Up A Good Manager, I'd Say Decisiveness.

Lee Iacocca
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.

Lee Iacocca
If you want to make good use of your time, you've got to know what's most important and then give it all you've got.

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

Lee Iacocca
The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business—or almost anywhere else for that matter.

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

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

Lee Iacocca
Most important decisions in corporate life are made by individuals, not by committees. My policy always has been to be democratic all the way to the point of decision. Then I become the ruthless commander. Okay, I've heard everybody, I say. Now here's what we're going to do.

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

Lee Iacocca
From what I've seen, you either get grounded in that kind of positive thinking early on in life or you don't. Establishing priorities and using your time well aren't things you can pick up at the Harvard Business School. Formal learning can teach you a great deal, but many of the essential skills in life are the ones you have to develop on your own.

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

Lee Iacocca
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."

Lee Iacocca
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.

Lee Iacocca
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.

Lee Iacocca