“The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization.”

Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.

You’ll learn more about a road by traveling it than by consulting all the maps in the world.

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.

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.

There is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

Organized religions in general, in my opinion, are dying forms.

Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.

Science is organized knowledge.

What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.

Absorb a massive amount of detail and organize it in his mind.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

An organization that is not facing up to people who are not getting the job done, is going to have difficulties.