It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun.

We have an obligation to give something back to the community that gives so much to us.

In my experience, good executives don’t make mistakes.

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.

I never considered my dreams wasted energy; they were invariably linked to some form of action. When I dreamed about having a lemonade stand, for example, it wasn’t long before I set up a lemonade stand.

I was never much of a reader when I was a boy. Books bored me. I liked action. But I spent a lot of time thinking about things. I’d imagine all kinds of situations and how I would handle them.

The first dollar is the most you will get if you don’t love what you are doing.

If you do it first class and you don’t compromise values, and you don’t compromise quality, and you don’t compromise service, and you don’t compromise cleanliness, then everybody else who is the competitor has got to play catch-up.

I like to get people fired up, fill them with zeal for McDonald’s, and watch the results in their work.

Our aim was to insure repeat business based on the system’s reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator.