Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Ray Kroc, fully Raymond Albert Kroc

American Businessman, Founder of McDonald's

"When you're green, you grow; when you ripen, you rot."

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

"All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment."

"I considered myself a connoisseur of kitchens. I prided myself on being able to tell which operations would appeal to the public and which would fail."

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

"Early to bed, early to rise, advertise, advertise, advertise."

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

"I have ALWAYS believed that each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems."

"I don't believe in saturation. We're thinking and talking worldwide."

"I didn't know what we would be selling in the year 2000 but whatever it was we would be selling the most of it."

"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. You're talking about the American way "

"I put the hamburger on the assembly line."

"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."

"If you have time to lean, you have time to clean."

"If you work just for money, you'll never make it, but if you love what you're doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours."

"If you"

"In business for yourself, not by yourself."

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

"McDonald's is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl's face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image."

"None of us is as good as all of us."

"Not all that are wandering are lost; just missing at the moment."

"It was not her sex appeal but the obvious relish with which she devoured the hamburger that made my pulse begin to hammer with excitement."

"It takes a certain type of mind to see beauty in a hamburger."

"It's a matter of having principles. It's easy to have principles when you're rich. The important thing is to have principles when you're poor."

"It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun. Yet, is it any more unusual to find grace in the texture and softly curved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on the hackles of a favourite fishing fly? Or the arrangement of textures and colours in a butterfly's wing? Not if you're a McDonald's man. Not if you view the bun as an essential material in the art of serving a great many meals fast."

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

"Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself."

"Our aim was to insure repeat business based on the system's reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator."

"Perfection is very difficult to achieve, and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald's. Everything else was secondary for me."

"Take calculated risks. Act boldly and thoughtfully. Be an agile company."

"The definition of salesmanship is the gentle art of letting the customer have it your way."

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

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

"Visions of McDonald's restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through my brain. I don't believe in saturation. We're thinking and talking worldwide."

"We have found out... that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists... We will make conformists out of them... The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization."

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

"We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else."

"The first dollar is the most you will get if you don't love what you are doing."

"The McDonald brothers were simply not on my wavelength at all. I was obsessed with the idea of making McDonald's the biggest and the best. They were content with what they had; they didn't want to be bothered with more risks and more demands."

"The more I help others to succeed, the more I succeed."

"The success of additions such as the Filet-o-Fish, the Big Mac, Hot Apple Pie and Egg McMuffin"

"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're not in the food industry, we're in people industry. We just happen to sell hamburgers."

"We're not in the hamburger business. We're in show business."

"What we have created is a business organization dedicated to rigid principles."

"When I saw it working that day in 1954, I felt like some latter-day Newton who'd just had an Idaho potato caromed off his skull. That night in my motel room I did a lot of heavy thinking about what I'd seen during the day. Visions of McDonald's restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through my brain."

"While formal schooling is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success nor is its absence a fatal handicap."

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

"Dear Walt, I feel somewhat presumptuous addressing you in this way. Yet I am sure you would not want me to address you any other way... I have very recently taken over the national franchise of the McDonald's system. I would like to inquire if there may be an opportunity for a McDonald's in your Disneyland Development."

"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."