Ray Kroc

If any of my competitors were drowning, I'd stick a hose in their mouth and turn on the water. It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they kill me.

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.

As long as you're green you're growing, as soon as you're ripe you start to rot.

One thing I flatly refuse to give money to is the support of any college. I've been wooed by some of the finest universities in the land, but I tell them they will not get a cent from me unless they put in a trade school. Our colleges are crowded with young people who are learning a lot about liberal arts and little about earning a living. There are too many baccalaureates and too few butchers.

I'd have a store with a row of vending machines in it. You'd push some buttons and out would come your Big Mac, shake, and fries, all prepared automatically. We could do that; I'm sure Jim Schindler could work it out. But we never will. McDonald's is a people business, and the smile on that counter girl's face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.

No stable in the world could stink worse than a rich vein of fermenting potato peelings.

I don't care if the Pope himself comes to Cincinnati. He can eat hamburgers like everybody else. We are not going to stink up our restaurants with any of your damned old fish!

He was regarded as a strange duck, because whenever we had time off and went out on the town to chase girls, he stayed in camp drawing pictures. His name was Walt Disney.

I would think of my mind as being a blackboard full of messages, most of them urgent, and I practiced imagining a hand with an eraser wiping that blackboard clean. I made my mind completely blank.

One of my suppliers told me, 'Ray, you know you aren't in the hamburger business at all. You're in the French-fry business. I don't know how the livin' hell you do it, but you've got the best French fries in town, and that's what's selling folks on your place.' You know, I think you're right, I replied. But, you son of a bitch, don't you dare tell anyone about it!

I believe in God, family, and McDonald's. And in the office, that order is reversed.

If you're not a risk-taker, you have no business being an entrepreneur.

I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night.

I didn't invent the hamburger. I just took it from the gutter and put it on a throne.

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.

When I saw that little drive-in stand, something inside me clicked.

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

I've always believed that if you're going to be successful, you have to be willing to do things that others aren't willing to do.

I was a salesman, and I always will be.

I believe in the golden rule: The man with the gold makes the rules.