Henry Royce

English engineer, car designer, co-founder of Rolls-Royce

Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet of Seaton, OBE (27 March 186322 April 1933) was an English engineer and car designer who, with Charles Rolls, founded the Rolls-Royce company.

Small things make perfection, but perfection is no small thing … Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.

Quotes

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I have only one regret … that I have not worked harder.
 
Strive for perfection in everything we do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough.
  • Strive for perfection in everything we do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough.
    • Slogan for the Rolls-Royce company, quoted in Transforming the Organization (1996) by Francis J. Gouillart, p. 85
  • Small things make perfection, but perfection is no small thing … Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.
    • As quoted in A Dictionary of Marketing (2011) by Charles Doyle, p. 391
  • I have only one regret … that I have not worked harder.
    • Deathbed assertion, as quoted in Outlook Business, Vol. 3, No. 4 (23 February 2008)

Quotes about Royce

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  • One respected critic described the 40/50 hp as being "a triumph of workmanship over design" — a cruel but not wholly inaccurate assessment. The meticulous quality of engineering insisted upon by the perfectionist Henry Royce was what established the marque's reputation.
    • On Royce's engineering, in Car: The Definitive Visual History of the Automobile (2011), by Penguin Books, p. 32
  • There is, however, one car company that has never lost sight of its role in the marketplace. Rolls-Royce. Sir Henry Royce, who founded the company back in 1904, really was a one-man quote machine. "Strive for perfection in everything you do." "Accept nothing as nearly right or good enough." "The quality remains long after the price is forgotten." "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it."
    • Jeremy Clarkson, I Know You Got Soul: Machines With That Certain Something (2004), p. 19
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