“I was sixty-six years old. I still had to make a living. I looked at my social security check of 105 dollars and decided to use that to try to franchise my chicken recipe. Folks had always liked my chicken.”

There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can’t do any business from there.

I’ve only had two rules. Do all you can and do it the best you can. It’s the only way you ever get that feeling of accomplishing something.

You got to like your work. You have got to like what you are doing, you have got to be doing something worthwhile so you can like it – because it is worthwhile, that it makes a difference, don’t you see?

One has to remember that every failure can be a stepping stone to something better.

People are just like farm equipment. They rust out quicker than they wear out.

Feed the poor and get rich or feed the rich and get poor.

Hard work beats all the tonics and vitamins in the world.

I’ve read hundreds of cookbooks. Most of those cookbooks don’t even tell you how to get a steak ready, how to bake biscuits or an apple pie.

I just say the moral out of my life is don’t quit at age 65, maybe your boat hasn’t come in yet. Mine hadn’t.

Work is the basis of living. I’ll never retire. A man’ll rust out quicker than he’ll wear out.

I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.

I am not too proud of having my name associated with some of my restaurants.

To me, my recipes are priceless.

The food I’ve liked in my time is American country cookin’.

A lot of learned men think people really are the food they’ve eaten.

The hard way builds solidly a foundation of confidence that cannot be swept away.

Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!

Age doesn’t matter. An open mind does.

Live your life and forget your age.

The age of every man shall be acknowledged before him in Heaven, and every man shall be rewarded for his willing service and for his time.

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.

If we look at the fact, we shall find that the great inventions of the age are not, with us at least, always produced in universities.

Filth and old age, I’m sure you will agree, are powerful wardens upon chastity.

I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.