Quotes from Ray Kroc

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

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.

We provide food that customers love, day after day after day. People just want more of it.

When you're green you're growing, and when you're ripe you start to rot.

All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.

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

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

The quality of an individual is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

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

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

None of us is as good as all of us

One night the revenue agents outmaneuvered the Palm Island security men and we all wound up in jail. I was mortified. My parents would disown me if they found out I had been put in jail with a bunch of common violators of the prohibition law. We were only there three hours, but it was one of the most uncomfortable 180-minute periods of my life. That

I had left Florida in the nick of time, it turned out. The business decline that began when the real estate boom collapsed caught up with the nightclubs soon after I left. The Silent Night closed its gates for good. Palm Island popped into the news once in a while as time went by. Al Capone built a home there. Then Lou Walters, father of TV's Barbara Walters, opened the Latin Quarter. But it was to be a long time before I saw Florida again.

I believe that if you think small, you'll stay small. Getting

When I flew back to Chicago that fateful day in 1954, I had a freshly signed contract with the McDonald brothers in my briefcase. I was a battle-scarred veteran of the business wars, but I was still eager to go into action. 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 that the best was ahead of me.

You must perfect every fundamental of your business if you expect it to perform well. We demonstrated this emphasis on details, and saw it pay off, in our approach to hamburger patties.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. —Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful individuals with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

I refused to worry about more than one thing at a time, and I would not let useless fretting about a problem, no matter how important, keep me from sleeping. This is easier said than done.

You must perfect every fundamental of your business if you expect it to perform well.

A little bit of luck helps, yes, but the key element, which too many in our affluent society have forgotten, is still hard work—grinding it out. Ray

After we got McDonald's going and built a larger staff, they all called her "Mother Martino." She kept track of everyone's family fortunes, whose wife was having a baby, who was having marital difficulties, or whose birthday it was. She helped make the office a happy place. It