The two most important requirements for major success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it.
If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.
If I had a brick for every time I’ve repeated the phrase Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value, I think I’d probably be able to bridge the Atlantic Ocean with them.
I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night.
In business for yourself, but not by yourself.
Visions of McDonald’s restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through my brain. I don’t believe in saturation. We’re thinking and talking worldwide.
The french fry is my canvas.
Luck is a dividend of sweat.
In my experience, good executives don’t make mistakes.
We have an obligation to give something back to the community that gives so much to us.
I suffer with you. I’ve never seen such stupid ballplaying in all my life!
I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced the best was ahead of me.
To be successful, you must be daring, be first and be different.
There’s a lot more future in hamburgers than in baseball.
There’s almost nothing you can’t accomplish if you set your mind to it.
Perfection is very difficult to achieve, and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald’s. Everything else was secondary for me.
The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization.
I put the hamburger on the assembly line.
I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s. And in the office, that order is reversed.
If my competitor were drowning I’d stick a hose in his mouth and turn on the water.