“Speaking of competition in the fast-food industry. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I’ll kill ’em, and I’m going to kill ’em before they kill me.”

Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself.

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

If my competitor were drowning I’d stick a hose in his mouth and turn on the water.

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.

There are things money can’t buy and hard work can’t win. One of them is happiness.

To an old leader will be born an idiot heir, weak both in knowledge and in war.

After there is great trouble among mankind, a greater one is prepared. The great mover of the universe will renew time, rain, blood, thirst, famine, steel weapons and disease. In the heavens, a fire seen.

It’s easy to have principles when you’re rich. The important thing is to have principles when you’re poor.

Creativity is a highfalutin’ word for the work I have to do between now and Tuesday.

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.

When times are bad is when you want to build! Why wait for things to pick up so everything will cost more?

You’re only as good as the people you hire.

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 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.

We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.

I’m a hard guy to live with. I’m like a caged animal. I’m up all night walking around the living room. It’s hard for me to come down from what I do.

Animals don’t hate, and we’re supposed to be better than them.

Just because an animal is large, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kindness.

There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

I think what is meant by animal spirits is to be pro-active on all things that you do.

Japan is in the process of regaining this animal spirit.

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.