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

Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet of Seaton, OBE (27 March 1863 – 22 April 1933) was an English engineer and car designer who, with Charles Rolls, founded the Rolls-Royce company.

Quotes

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.
  • 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

• The quality will remain long after the price is forgotten.
  • As quoted in "Rolls-Royce Quotations" at the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club

• 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

• 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

External links

• "Sir Henry Royce and the History of Rolls-Royce" at learnist