Home > Work > Iacocca: An Autobiography
1 " Get all the education you can then go out and do something - do anything. "
― Lee Iacocca , Iacocca: An Autobiography
2 " 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. "
3 " 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. "
4 " 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. "
5 " Although I was never a candidate, I learned a lot from all the presidential talk. Shortly after the whole business began, I was having a conversation with a guy in advertising. He said something interesting: “I’ve decided why everybody talks about you as a presidential candidate. It’s very simple. They don’t believe anybody anymore. You talk to them and you make them believe that you stand for something and then you pursue it. You don’t bullshit them, and the American public has been bullshitted too often. "
6 " 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? "
7 " If I had to sum up in one word the qualities that make a good manager, I’d say that it all comes down to decisiveness. "
8 " It looks bad right now, but remember, this too shall pass. "
9 " 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. "
10 " But one thing was perfectly clear: John was sacrificing himself to save the company. He was over his head and he knew it. Although it meant the end of his own career, he bent over backward to make sure that the transition would go as smoothly as possible. He blew himself out of the water to bring Chrysler back to life. And that is the test of a real hero. "
11 " 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. "
12 " Setbacks are a natural part of life, and you’ve got to be careful how you respond to them. "
13 " 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. "
14 " 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. "
15 " By their very nature, financial analysts tend to be defensive, conservative, and pessimistic. On the other side of the fence are the guys in sales and marketing—aggressive, speculative, and optimistic. They’re always saying, “Let’s do it,” while the bean counters are always cautioning you on why you shouldn’t do it. In any company you need both sides of the equation, because the natural tension between the two groups creates its own system of checks and balances. "
16 " The trouble with you, Phil, is that you went to Harvard, where they taught you not to take any action until you’ve got all the facts. You’ve got ninety-five percent of them, but it’s going to take you another six months to get that last five percent. And by the time you do, your facts will be out of date because the market has moved on you. That’s what life is all about—timing. "
17 " 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. "
18 " It seems that in the United States the one thing you can count on is that even during a depression, the rich get richer. "
