Quotes from Alan Mulally

I can remember the first time I tried to drive into the garage of the world headquarters of Ford in a Camry. It was almost like they wouldn't let me in. They said, 'Why do you want to do that?' I said, 'Because we are going to make the best cars in the world, and we need to know everything about the competitor's car.'

I was the lead designer and the general manager of the triple 7 and, of course, the dynamite 787.

I had a great life at Boeing. I'd been there for 37 years and contributed to all the Boeing airplanes as a designer: the 707, 727, 37, 47, 57, 67 and 'triple 7' and the 87.

Where you really get in trouble is if the market is dropping and the economy's slowing down and you don't take action.

I've just seen it all - I've seen the bird flu, I've seen the Asian economic meltdown, SARS, 9/11, economic cycles.

I have a lot of respect for Microsoft.

I grew up with Microsoft. I know the leadership of Microsoft.

Some people believe the U.S. can't compete in the design and manufacture of sophisticated products. I think we absolutely can if we pull together. We have shown that we can do that in commercial airplanes, and we can absolutely prove that we can do that in automobiles.

Think about just exceeding expectations of every job you're being asked to do. Continually ask for feedback on how it's going. Ask everybody involved what you can do to do an even better job, and the world will beat down your door trying to ask you to do more and more.

My career has been spent developing airplanes.

The automobile has moved into the mainstream of our integrated digital world.

I felt very comfortable moving from aerospace to automobiles.

Having one national standard for mpg and CO2 is extremely important.

Never make a joke or try for humor at someone else's expense. In a high-stakes environment, everyone needs to feel safe.

I found a new love in Google. I'm a Googler now.

A lot of people don't want to get bad news.

I drive a different car every night.

There's a Ford dealer in every city around the United States. They're the fabric of the community. They're either head of the chamber of commerce or the priest, or I mean they're just the fabric of America, and they took care of us.

As we develop our energy policies in the United States to generate our energy clean, then I think we're going to really move to a world that all of us want, and that is a sustainable future.

At Ford, one of the behaviors is you listen, and you don't have side conversations during the meeting. It's just so important everybody stays focused.

You need to have a can-do attitude. There is always a way.

If you get honest feedback and do nothing about it, then the feedback will stop.

Ford had a number of different strategies over the years that they thought obviously made sense at the time, just like all the different brands, and also the regional operations.

We're so interdependent, and what one country does is such an important part of what happens in the global economy.