• I saw opportunity appear in the form of an ugly, six-spindled milk shake machine called a Multimixer, and I grabbed it. It wasn’t easy to give up security and a well-paying job to strike out on my own. My wife was shocked and incredulous.

• I was happy to observe, it was every bit as simple as the McDonald boys had told me it was. I was convinced that I had it down pat in my head, and that anybody could do it if he followed those individual steps to the letter. That was just one of the many mistakes I would make in my dealings with the McDonald brothers.

• There is an old saying that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I never believed it because, for me, work was play. I got as much pleasure out of it as I did from playing baseball.

• 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.

• There’s almost nothing you can’t accomplish if you set your mind to it.

• worked out a system that allowed me to turn off nervous tension and shut out nagging questions when I went to bed. I knew that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be bright and fresh and able to deal with customers in the morning.

• So I told her I couldn’t pay much, but if she was willing to work hard anyhow, I could promise her a bright future. We talked the same language. She did work hard—unbelievably hard—and in less than twenty years she was one of the top women executives in the country, secretary and treasurer of McDonald’s Corporation.

• If she didn’t know something, she’d burrow into library books and find out.

• There’s an old saying that a man who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer, and it certainly applied in this instance.

• Harry was the scholarly type. He analyzed situations on the basis of management theory and economic principles. I proceeded on the strength of my salesman’s instinct and my subjective assessment of people. I have often been asked to explain the methods I use in choosing executives, because much of the success of my organization has been a result of the kind of people I have picked for key positions.

• My executive style was prone to that sort of thing far more than Harry Sonneborn’s. On the other hand, his cool, dispassionate manner didn’t inspire much spirit and enthusiasm. I like to get people fired up, fill them with zeal for McDonald’s, and watch the results in their work.

• People have marveled at the fact that I didn’t start McDonald’s until I was fifty-two years old, and then I became a success overnight. But I was just like a lot of show business personalities who work away quietly at their craft for years, and then, suddenly, they get the right break and make it big. I was an overnight success all right, but thirty years is a long, long night.

• The thing that has made this country great is our free enterprise system. If we have to resort to this—bringing in the government—to beat our competition, then we deserve to go broke. If we can’t do it by offering a better fifteen-cent hamburger, by being better merchandisers, by providing faster service and a cleaner place, then I would rather be broke tomorrow and out of this business and start all over again in something else.”

• I made Harry Sonneborn president and chief executive officer of McDonald’s in 1959, when he negotiated the $1.5 million loan with the three insurance companies. I continued as chairman, and we worked substantially as equals. Harry’s sphere was financial and administrative matters. Mine was the retail end—operations, dealing with suppliers, and so forth. Our interests and control overlapped when it came to seeking out sites and developing them. The two of us were the only officers with authority to close a transaction for a new location.

• But 1967 ended very profitably, because the twenty percent price increase on twenty percent of our product added greatly to the income from our company stores. Of course, it didn’t do our franchisees any harm either.

• But business is not like painting a picture. You can’t put a final brush stroke on it and then hang it on the wall and admire it.

• I believe that if you think small, you’ll stay small.