O. Henry Quotes

Gravity is the best cloak for sin in all countries.

Fear hath the common fault of a justice of peace, and is apt to conclude hastily from every slight circumstance, without examining the evidence on both sides.

A grave aspect to a grave character is of much more consequence than the world is generally aware of; a barber may make you laugh, but a surgeon ought rather to make you cry.

Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.

It is admirably remarked, by a most excellent writer, that zeal can no more hurry a man to act in direct opposition to itself than a rapid stream can carry a boat against its own current.

Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food.

I began demonstrating against serious culture. In hindsight, the actual course of events has been very humiliating for me, because no one picked up on the intellectual critique I made.

Around 1967 I began backing away from dogmatic Leninism, not so much because I thought it was false, I just decided there was nothing utopian about it.

In classical oil painting, there seemed to be a radical turn to seeing things as the camera sees them, with that technological modification. I began to have a tremendous problem with all of this.

[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

Even paranoid people have enemies.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.

You don't have to hold a position to be a leader.

Where position is felt to be a birthright, generosity is possible (though not guaranteed); flexibility is not inhibited by a commitment to perpetual success.

Sometimes you just don't like somebody

I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.

The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.

One of the most difficult things to do in life is thinking; that's why so few people engage in it.

The depression was just a state of mind. It is over for everyone who has changed his state of mind.

Why should I clutter my mind with general information when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I need?

I invented nothing new. I simply combined the inventions of others into a car. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.

A manufacturer is not through with his customer when a sale is completed. He has then only started with his customer.

I was happier when I was doing a mechanic's job.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

The most important history is the history we make today.

The great need of the world has always been for leaders. With more leaders we could have more industry. More industry, more employment and comfort for all.

A nation that knows how to work will never suffer.

Individualism is what makes cooperation worth living.

Education is preeminently a matter of quality, not amount.

In the Ford Motor Company, we emphasize service equally with sales.

The time will come when man will know even what is going on in the other planets and perhaps be able to visit them.

The average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it. There is plenty of work to do if people would do it.

Money doesn't change men. It merely unmasks them.

U.S. policy toward the third world should be one of depopulation

I regarded our progress merely as an invitation to do more - as an indication that we had reached a place where we might begin to perform a real service.

As we serve our jobs we serve the world.

An expert is someone who articulates the needs of those in power.

There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off.

The question who ought to be boss is like who ought to be the tenor in the quartet? Obviously, the man who can sing tunor.

The greatest day of my life was the day I married Mrs. Ford.

Economy has frequently nothing whatever to do with the amount of money being spent, but with the wisdom used in spending it.

Success is a matter of adjusting one's efforts to obstacles and one's abilities to a service needed by others.

You take all the experience and judgment of men over 50 out of the world and there wouldn't be enough left to run it.

The thing to do with money is to put it back into yourself, into your work, into the thing that is important, into whatever you are so much interested in that it is more important than money.

Two classes of people lose money; those who are too weak to guard what they have; those who win money by trick. They both lose in the end.