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 Henry Ford was a complex and contradictory man who left behind a sometimes perplexing legacy. And it certainly helps little that his biographers–himself included–have complicated him and his legacy further by layering their own interpretations, obfuscations, and omissions atop biographical facts, confusing many an issue related to him. Ironically, those complications have, today, made it rather difficult to parse what exactly Ford meant when he famously claimed that “history is bunk.”
At least twice in May 1916, with war ravaging Europe and Americans debating whether the country should involve itself, Ford made similar comments in interviews defending his belief in non-intervention. To Charles N. Wheeler of the Chicago Tribune–who published a three-part interview with Ford culminating in the article in question on May 26–Ford said
"History is more or less bunk. It is tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.
That’s the trouble with the world. We’re living in books and history and tradition. We want to get away from that and take care of today. We’ve done too much looking back. What we want to do and do it quick is to make just history right now."
Parsing the meaning behind the words of an automotive icon.
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Re: Fact Check: What Henry Ford Meant When He Said “History is bunk”
