All things being equal, I think people would still prefer to do business with their hometown companies. That's true in America, that's true in China, that's true in Germany.

A good company delivers excellent products and services, and a great company does all that and strives to make the world a better place.

As long as gas is cheaper than bottled water, we can't be in a position of dictating to the consumer what to buy.

I never wanted Ford to be a place, like the tobacco industry, where our employees were not proud of coming to work for us. I felt there was a danger of that, should we be marginalized as a major polluter.

I don't ever want to believe my own press clippings, good or bad.

Nobody's irreplaceable, including me. I think for too long we've had a cult of personality in this company and in this industry, and frankly, I'd like to see that diminish.

I think I was the first executive to ever speak at a Greenpeace business conference, in London in 2001. That didn't play well here at Ford, but I thought it was an important signal to send internally, that these were the kind of issues we needed to be grappling with.