Best business quotes

Whatever you are, be a good one.

You can't be successful in business without taking risks. It's really that simple.

A business idea is just another idea. But an idea backed by a strong feasibility, a thorough business plan and a smart team is no longer an idea. It's now a solid business opportunity worth pursuing.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.

I had a great year and left my guts out on the field.

I want to build a positive image that will last my career.

I've learned in my career, it is much better to be recognized for all the great things you do on the field.

People now are beginning to cheer for me. I've never heard that before. .. Maybe things are turning a bit.

When I entered the pros, I was a young kid in the major leagues. I was 18 years old, right out of high school. I thought I knew everything, and I clearly didn't.

No athlete ever ends his or her career the way you want to. We all want to play forever. But it doesn't work that way. Accepting the end gracefully is part of being a professional athlete.

How can I ever dog Derek Jeter? It's impossible. There is nothing to knock. He's a great defensive player. He's a great offensive player.

What I found is that experience in the World Series made me connect more with the fans.

I'm never happy with my performance.

When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me, and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day.

It's a game that just takes so much out of you. Every aspect of your life has to be very narrow, very focused. Everything else has to go away. And because of that, I think it's obviously not healthy. The last thing I'm looking for is sympathy.

I take full responsibility for the mistakes that led to my suspension for the 2014 season.

I feel like I'm getting close. I like playing at the Stadium. I like hitting at the Stadium.

It's important for me to play well down the stretch for this team—and in October.

I was naive, and I wanted to prove to everyone that, you know, I was worth, you know, being one of the greatest players of all time.

I did take a banned substance and, you know, for that I'm very sorry and deeply regretful. I'm sorry for that time. I'm sorry to fans. I'm sorry for my fans in Texas. It wasn't until then that I ever thought about substance of any kind, and since then I've proved to myself and to everyone that I don't need any of that.

I'm looking at 600 like first base. You want to run right through it and use it as a springboard for more to come.

We have a lot of team goals right now. My focus right now is think small, drive in runs and not worry about too much.

To be a good entrepreneur you have to understand personal finance.

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self control -- these three alone lead to power.

We think mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of the time we put in at work, instead of the quality of the time we put in.

Vision without execution is hallucination.

Ninety-nine percent of the time it's not urgent and to create a culture where you are constantly plugged in and expected to be always-on is to create a culture of burnout.

Making money and doing good in the world are not mutually exclusive.

Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.

As you set out for Ithaka, hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery.

Whenever we look around the world, we see smart leaders – in politics, in business, in media – making terrible decisions. What they're lacking is not IQ, but wisdom. Which is no surprise; it has never been harder to tap into our inner wisdom, because in order to do so, we have to disconnect from all our omnipresent devices – our gadgets, our screens, our social media – and reconnect with ourselves.

One company that did wake up to the importance of employee health was Safeway. The supermarket chain's former CEO Steve Burd recounts that in 2005 Safeway's health care bill hit $1 billion and was going up by $100 million a year. What we discovered was that 70 percent of healthcare costs are driven by people's behaviors, he says. Now as a business guy, I thought if we could influence the behavior of our 200,000-person workforce, we could have a material effect on health care costs.

Life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen.

You have to do what you dream of doing even while you're afraid.

Are we living our dream, or are we living somebody else's dream?

Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an after-life.

I find that I am much more creative when I've actually taken care of myself.

Don't buy society's definition of success because it's not working for anyone.

Sleep deprivation is the new smoking.

I see some people stay in one place because it's convenient or it's comfortable. But they're missing out on their passion.

My career, and I would say the careers of most people I know, has not been linear.

I remember when my second book in my 20s was rejected by 36 publishers — by which time I was tempted to change professions — I went and got a loan from a bank and kept going.

I think our resilience is dramatically improved when we trust that often out of the biggest heartbreaks come the best things in our lives.

Like airlines, we routinely overbook ourselves, fearful of any unused capacity, confident that we can fit everything in. We fear that if we don't cram as much as possible into our day, we might miss out on something fabulous, important, special, or career advancing. But there are no rollover minutes in life. We don't get to keep all that time we save. It's actually a very costly way to live.

We simply need to claim it back and share it. We are too quick to censor or judge our natural creative impulses as not being good enough. But we need to give ourselves permission to follow what makes us feel most alive. And when we are most alive we are most compassionate and vice versa. If you love to sing, sing—you don't have to sing in a choir or become a soloist. If you love to write poems or short stories, write them—you don't have to become a published author. If you love to paint, paint. Don't squash your creative instincts because you're not good enough to turn what you love to do into a career.

That's because women are paying an even higher price than men for their participation in a work culture fueled by stress, sleep deprivation, and burnout. That is one reason why so many talented women, with impressive degrees working in high-powered jobs, end up abandoning their careers when they can afford

The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business.

If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn't have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution to a problem in your own life.

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.

Think big but start small.

To any entrepreneur: if you want to do it, do it now. If you don't, you're going to regret it.

Avoid working directly under somebody you don't admire and don't want to be like.

Everybody engaged in complex work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing.

Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.

If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock.

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.

Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.

The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.

Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.

A penny saved is still just a fucking penny.

Most entrepreneurs fail because they underestimate the difficulty and the effort that it takes to succeed.

You don't want to compete in a market or niche. You want to dominate it. Any company that's a great company always dominates.

Visibility is more important than ability. You need to be known. You need people to want to hire you. Without customers you have no revenue, and no revenue means no business.

I failed at 13 business before having my first success. Once you succeed, nobody cares about your failures.

If you study failure and avoid those, the chance of you succeeding becomes much higher.

Entrepreneurs solve people's problems at a profit.

Idea generator #23 info-products based on your personal interests or expertise

Many entrepreneurs lack focus. They cannot focus on one thing. They jump from one thing to another. The greatest edge you can have is laser beam focus.

What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: Know your product better than anyone. Know your customer. Have a burning desire to succeed.

Entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.

Don't worry about failure; you only have to be right once.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

If you think big, then it's going to be big.

Start today, not tomorrow. If anything, you should have started yesterday. The earlier you start, the more time you have to mess up.

You always have to dream big and think big.

Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.

Work hard in silence. Let success make the noise.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

We adapt, and we grow. AI is the tractor of our time, and we need to embrace it. You can have any opinion you want on AI, but here's the truth: technology doesn't care about your opinion. It's not gonna stop advancing.

Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.

Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.

In the business world everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take experience first; the cash will come later.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Paying attention to simple little things that most men neglect makes a few men rich.

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

Quality means doing right when no one else is looking.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; Working together is a success.

A great business has to have a conscience. You have to know who you are and who you are not.

When you're building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can't have two sets of information for two sets of people.

I'm not as interested in what you make as I am in what you're passionate about. What business are you really in?

Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.

Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can't cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.

The ability to recognize limitations in yourself is what determines whether you have a great idea that can become a great business. You can't keep your finger on the pulse of all the issues you'll face; no one person can do everything. Entrepreneurs are bold thinkers, but they're usually not detail-oriented. You need the self-esteem to hire people who are smarter than you and give them the autonomy to manage their own areas. Surround yourself with great people and get out of the way; don't try to micromanage things as you did early on.

Be very careful not to allow the values of the company to be compromised by an ambition to grow. Every decision and opportunity has to be put into that context: What will it look like in the long term? Growth can be a seductive evil if it isn't built on the right foundation. There are a lot of similarities between rearing a family, where the parents imprint values on their children, and starting a new business, where the founder sets the ground rules very early. If you do it right and maintain those values, growth will be managed so you don't lose the soul of the company.

I can't give you any secret recipe for success, any foolproof plan for making it in the world of business. But my own experience suggests that it is possible to start from nothing and achieve even beyond your dreams.

You have to have a 100% belief in your core reason for being.

You have to be authentic, you have to be true, and you have to believe in your heart that this is going to work.

We live in an age where everything is based on the short term.

Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is on the most important characteristic, which is trust.

You can't build any kind of organization if you're not going to surround yourself with people who have experience and skill base beyond your own.

Often, organizations need bold, grand gestures to galvanize people towards a new mission or refocus their attention.

When you start a company, it's a singular focus. You have the wind at your back.

People ask me what's the most important function when you're starting an organization or setting up the kind of culture and values that are going to endure. The discipline I believe so strongly in is H.R., and its the last discipline that gets funded.

I think many start-ups make mistakes because they are focusing on things that are farther ahead, and they haven't done the work that has built the foundation to support it.

We have no patent on anything we do and anything we do can be copied by anyone else. But you can't copy the heart and soul and the conscience of the company.

In this ever-changing society, the most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart. They are real and sustainable. Their foundations are stronger because they are built with the strength of the human spirit, not an ad campaign. The companies that are lasting are those that are authentic.

I was turned down by 217 of the 242 investors I initially talked to. You have to have a tremendous belief in what you're doing and just persevere. The three venture capital firms we ended up with in 1989 are still on the board today and have been an invaluable resource. You have to build a board where there are shared values and trust so you aren't always at odds. I encourage board members to be honest with me, and I give them assignments that enhance their contributions.

Great companies recognize who they are and who they are not. But they must have the courage to examine transformational opportunities.

Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.

Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.

If your thoughts are as tall as the height of your ceiling, you can't fly above your room.

Seek advice on risk from the wealthy who still take risks, not friends who dare nothing more than a football bet.

I learn the most when I make myself feel uncomfortable.

I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.

I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.

You have to see failure as the beginning and the middle, but never entertain it as an end.

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

Either you run the day, or the day runs you.

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.

Every single person I know who is successful at what they do is successful because they love doing it.

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

The greatness ability in business is to get along with others and influence their actions.

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.

I think, as an entrepreneur, you have to see the unlimited amount of potential but concentrate on your day and just keep building.

Choose the people you work with carefully; they are more important than what you do!

If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to meet it!

Much of everyday life is filled with opportunities to be distracted. Our possessions... entertainment... cares and anxieties... and even the passionate desire and pursuit of things, some good and not so good, can keep our minds and hearts caught up in a flurry of activity.

Sometimes new opportunities means new opposition. Not everything God asks us to do will be comfortable.

Our problems are God's opportunities.

If you can find people who think that what you're doing is great, they're going to do everything in their power to make it a success.

In business, we often say that your best customers are the customers you have now. In other words, your most successful sales leads come from the selling you've already done.

People do business with people they know and like.

We have a tendency to romanticize independence. Most business literature still views autonomy as a virtue, as though communication, teamwork, and cooperation were lesser values.

Identify the people in your industries who always seem to be out in front, and use all the relationship skills you've acquired to connect with them.

Connecting is a constant process of giving and receiving—of asking for and offering help.

Each of us is now a brand. Gone are the days where your value as an employee was linked to your loyalty and seniority. Companies use branding to develop strong, enduring relationships with customers. In today's fluid economy, you must do the same with your network.

So how do you manage a cold call? First, it's all about attitude. Your attitude. You're never going to be completely ready to meet new people; there is no perfect moment. Your fears will never be completely quieted, because inviting rejection is never going to be appealing. There are always a hundred reasons to procrastinate. The trick is to just plunge right in. Remember, if you believe you are going to get what you want from call, you probably won't. ... You have to envision yourself winning to win.

Selling is reduced to its essence, solving another person's problems.

To become a brand, you've got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value. And I promise you can add value to whatever job you're doing now. Can you do what you do faster and more efficiently? If so, why not document what it would take to do so and offer it to your boss as something all employees might do? Do you initiate new projects on your own and in your spare time? Do you search out ways to save or make your company more money?

If it takes more than ten seconds to pitch your content, a television producer will assume you won't be able to get your point of view across to an impatient audience. And a reporter might try to hustle you off the phone. Learn to be brief—in both your written and phone pitches. Brevity is cherished in the media.

Create a story about your company and the ideas it embodies that readers will care about.

I've got the inside scoop on how the gaming industry is going to revolutionize marketing. I've appreciated your work for a long time now; I believe you are the right person to break this story.

There is only one way to get anybody to do anything. Do you know what it is? This is far from a trivial question. Business is, after all, the ability to motivate a group of individuals to move an idea from concept to reality; to take a theory and make it a practice; to gain the buy-in of your employees and colleagues; to encourage others to execute your plans

When management guru Peter Drucker was asked for one thing that would make a person better in business, he responded, Learn to play the violin.

Business cycles ebb and flow; your friends and trusted associates remain.

Creativity in business is often nothing more than making connections that everyone else has almost thought of. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, just attach it to a new wagon.

The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

A journey of a thousand leagues begins beneath one's feet.

It also strengthens our No. 1 positions in the application business in North America. And it moves us closer to our goal of being No. 1 in applications globally.

Our applications business is strong and getting stronger, ... Oracle's new e-Business Suite puts every aspect of a business - marketing, sales, service, procurement, supply chain, manufacturing, accounting, human resources - everything, on the Internet. All the applications in our suite are designed and engineered to work together, so customers buying the entire suite don't need to do any systems integration.

What can a sales person say to somebody to get them to buy a product that they already use every day if they don't like it? Nothing.

Once the business data have been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts.

I think about the business all the time. Well I shouldn't say all the time. I don't think about it when I am wake-boarding. But even when I am on vacation, or on my boat; I am on email everyday. I am always prowling around the internet looking at what our competitors are doing.

If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you're going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to 'be different'.

When you're the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you're basically saying, I'm right, and everyone else is wrong. That's a very unpleasant position to be in. It's at once exhilarating and at the same time an invitation to be attacked.

Being first is more important to me. I have so much money. Whatever money is, it's just a method of keeping score now. I mean, I certainly don't need more money.

I didn't understand that building a big consulting business was making it much harder for us to sell our applications…

I had to ask people I had worked with for a decade… to leave. I had to fire people. That was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in business. Asking a bunch of people to leave Oracle.

Don't tell us how you've been running your business… It's a classic business mistake to say, 'This is how we do business; change your software so we can automate it.

Why do people use heavily customized, one-of-a-kind business systems? Because they had no other choice.

We do want to sell to business people as opposed to IT people. We think it is a little bit strange that business people aren't involved in this stuff.

The business people are the ones who should understand what we are selling and the ones who should make that decision to buy or not buy.

I cannot run this business and tell the truth to customers. It's not possible.

You can't conform in business.

It's a classic business mistake to say, 'This is how we do business; change your software so we can automate it.' A new approach is needed. First, you must simply and modernize all your business processes, then move those newly standardized processes to the Internet. Only then can you expect the system to improve your business. Only then can you expect the system to be delivered on time.

Starting your own business is like riding a roller coaster. There are highs and lows and every turn you take is another twist. The lows are really low, but the highs can be really high. You have to be strong, keep your stomach tight, and ride along with the roller coaster that you started.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Think bigger. Forget limits. Embrace the idea of endless possibility. It will change you.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

You are better off trying something and having it not work and learning from that than not doing anything at all.

People can be really smart or have skills that are directly applicable, but if they don't really believe in it, then they are not going to really work hard.

The question I ask myself like almost every day is, 'Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?' … Unless I feel like I'm working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I'm not going to feel good about how I'm spending my time.

Advertising works most effectively when it's in line with what people are already trying to do.

I think as a company, if you can get those two things right – having a clear direction on what you are trying to do and bringing in great people who can execute on the stuff – then you can do pretty well.

Building a mission and building a business go hand-in-hand.

We look for people who are passionate about something. In a way, it almost doesn't matter what you're passionate about.

I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.

A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers. I think it's the most ridiculous concept.

About half my time is spent on business operation type stuff.

We are a mission-driven company. In order to do this, we have to build a great team. And in order to do that, you need people to know they can make a bunch of money. So we need a business model to make a lot of money.

Move fast, take risks, it's okay to try big things you're better off trying something and having it not work and learning from that than having not done anything at all.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk.

So many businesses get worried about looking like they might make a mistake, they become afraid to take any risk. Companies are set up so that people judge each other on failure. I am not going to get fired if we have a bad year. Or a bad five years. I don't have to worry about making things look good if they're not. I can actually set up the company to create value.

If you don't risk anything you risk everything.

In a world that's changing so quickly, you're guaranteed to fail if you don't take any risks.

Companies face a handful of different risks, whether it is competitors or different market environments. But I think that people focus way too much on competitors and not enough on their own execution.

The question I ask myself almost every day is, 'Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?'

Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, 'make me feel important.' Never forget this message when working with people.

Don't limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.

Think big; think disruptive. Execute with full passion.

I don't have big ideas. I sometimes have small ideas, which seem to work out.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

You never lose in business, either you win or you learn.

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

A goal is a dream with a deadline.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Forty hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess.

Lead from the back and let others believe they are in front.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, it's not a job, it's a lifestyle. It defines you. Forget about vacations, about going home at 6pm -- last thing at night you'll send emails, first thing in the morning you'll read emails, and you'll wake up in the middle of the night. But it's hugely rewarding as you're fulfilling something for yourself.

If you look at the people in your circle and don't get inspired, then you don't have a circle. You have a cage.

I'm always doing things I can't do. That's how I get to do them.

If you think small, your world will be small. If you think big, your world will be big.

Passion gets an entrepreneur through the startup days and the enormous efforts it takes to build a business.

Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation.

Play by the rules, but be ferocious.

Play by the rules, but be ferocious.

If you're passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.

If you're passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

I operate my life like a startup. I learn a little bit and I test something else out and I keep iterating and iterating until it's perfect.

What does it feel like to pay for these things that I love?

There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.

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

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

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

In business for yourself, but not by yourself.

If any of my competitors were drowning, I'd stick a hose in their mouth.

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

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 - of survival of the fittest.

I guess to be an entrepreneur you have to have a large ego, enormous pride and an ability to inspire others to follow your lead,

A lot of financiers and business moguls seemed to be looking at the world through the rose-colored glasses that Tommy Malie sang about, and if great men like Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover believed we had reached the point of perpetual prosperity, who was to disagree?

Just when I was getting into the swing of selling these lots, the whole business vanished.

Building dream castles was one thing; actually getting into the restaurant development business was a seemingly insurmountable problem.

The best part of it for me personally was that every time I saw a new Walgreen's store going up it meant new business. This sort of multiplication was clearly the way to go. I spent less and less time chasing pushcart vendors around the West Side and more time cultivating large accounts where big turnover would automatically winch in sales in the thousands and hundreds of thousands.

Years later I learned that Gerry [Newman] had gone home and told his wife, Bobbi, that he had met me that night, and I had to be either a nut or a dreamer or both. Here he was worried about whether we'd still be in business the next week, and I was carrying on about the billions of dollars in our future.

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

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

I like to get people fired up, fill them with zeal for McDonald's, and watch the results in their work.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

This was the beginning of real income for McDonald's.

People have marveled at the fact that I didn't start McDonalds 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.

Years later I recalled that spare bill in my first motto for McDonalds – KISS – which means, 'Keep it simple, stupid.'

I paid tribute, in the feudal sense, for many years before I was able to rise with McDonald's on the foundation I had laid.

The simplicity of the procedure allowed the McDonalds to concentrate on quality in every step, and that was the trick.

This seemingly innocuous requirement created massive problems for me. There's an old saying that a man who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer, and it certainly applied in this instance.

I have often been asked why I didn't simply copy the McDonalds brothers' plan. They showed me the whole thing and it would have been an easy matter, seemingly to pattern a restaurant after theirs. Truthfully, the idea never crossed my mind. I saw it through the eyes of a salesman. Here was a complete package, and I could get out and talk up a storm about it. … I guess the real answer is that I was so naïve or so honest and that it never occurred to me that I could take their idea and copy it and not pay them a red cent.

This was a veritable Wagnerian opera of strife.

I had no time to bother with emotional stress, though. I had to find a site for my first McDonald's store and start building.

My troubles started the minute I got together with my contractor and went over with him the plans furnished by the McDonald's architect. That structure was designed for a semi-desert location. It was on a slab, no basement, and it had a swamp cooler on the roof.

I had to admire his persistence, and also the resolve he had that he would devote every working minute to McDonald's – twenty-four hours a day if necessary. I believed him.

Let's get this straight once and for all. I want nothing from you but a good product. Don't wine me, don't dine me, don't buy me any Christmas presents. If there are any cost breaks, pass them on to the operators of McDonald's stores.

It was not long after the Fold-a-Nook fiasco that I became intrigued by the stories of the McDonald brothers and their operation that kept eight Multimixers whirring up a bucket brigade of milk shakes out there in sunny San Bernardino.

Then I went over to the building and introduced myself to Mac and Dick McDonald. They were delighted to see me (Mr. Multimixer they called me), and I warmed up to them immediately. We made a date to get together for dinner that evening so they could tell me all about their operation.

This historic year of 1976 will see McDonald's Corporation surpass one billion dollars in total revenue for the first time. Casual students of business history may not realize the significance of the fact that this milestone will be reached during the twenty-second year of the company's history.

I had memorized the procedure when I watched the McDonald's operation in San Bernardino, and I had done it exactly the same way. I went through the whole thing once more. The result was the same—bland, mushy french fries. They were as good, actually, as the french fries you could buy at other places. But that was not what I wanted.

A subject of much greater concern to me, however, was the great french-fry flop. I had explained to Ed MacLuckie with great pride the McDonald's secret for making french fries. I showed him how to peel the potatoes, leaving just a bit of the skin to add flavor.

It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun.

There's a lot more future in hamburgers than in baseball.

I put the hamburger on the assembly line.

We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.

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 carved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on the hackles of a fishing fly? Or the arrangements and textures on a butterfly's wing? Not if you are a McDonalds's man.

Work is the meat in the hamburger of life.

It was then that Harry's view of the corporation as just a real estate business, rather than a hamburger business, began to crystallize.

I brought in architectural consultants one after the other in an attempt to solve the problem of exhausting the stale air and replacing it with fresh cool or heated air. These guys could design a cathedral, but they didn't seem to be able to deal with my little hamburger store.

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!

For an operator to insist on peeling his own potatoes in the store instead of using a frozen product was on the same order as insisting on slaughtering his own steers and grinding the hamburger. Not quite as messy, of course, but potato peelings gave us plenty of problems nevertheless.

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!

We are in the real estate business, not the hamburger business.

I can still picture those newspaper headlines announcing, 'The End of an Era: McDonald's 15-Cent Hamburger is Now 18 Cents.' Whew!

I worked at something whenever possible. Work is the meat in the hamburger of life. 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. Baseball

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

Where there is no risk, there can be no pride in achievement and, consequently, no happiness.

The only way we can advance is by going forward, individually and collectively, in the spirit of the pioneer. We must take the risks involved in our free enterprise system.

If you're not a risk-taker, you should get the hell out of business.

You're not going to get it free, and you have to take risks. I don't mean to be a daredevil, that's crazy. But you have to take risks, and in some cases you must go for broke.

Taking reasonable risks is part of the challenge. It's fun.

I became a real entrepreneur, crazy enough to take the risk of losing everything.

Opportunity is dead in the United States! The tax structure has destroyed all incentive! How often we have heard such laments during the past thirty years, when in fact greater fortunes have been made and higher living standards achieved than ever before on earth!

A man must take advantage of any opportunity that comes along…

I saw opportunity appear in an ugly six-spindle shake machine ... and grabbed it.

The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.

The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.

Before dreaming about the future or making plans, you need to articulate what you already have going for you -- as entrepreneurs do.

You only need to do a couple of things very well to succeed.

If people aren't calling you crazy, you aren't thinking big enough.

Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients.

Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.

Similarities and compliments cause people to feel that you like them, and once they come to recognize that you like them, they'll want to do business with you. That's because people trust that those who like them will try to steer them correctly. So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them.

People will do business with people they know, like and trust based on your knowledge, your creativity, and your credibility.

We want to do business with people or brands that we like and have forged a bond with over the years.

Organizations can raise the probability that an individual will appear at a meeting or event by switching from saying at the end of a reminder phone call, We'll mark you on the list as coming then. Thank you! to We'll mark you on the list as coming then, okay? [Pause for confirmation.] Thank you.

It is much more profitable for salespeople to present the expensive item first, not only because to fail to do so will lose the influence of the contrast principle; to fail to do so will also cause the principle to work actively against them. Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly as a result—hardly a desirable consequence for most sales organizations.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

People expect good service but few are willing to give it.

Losers quit when they fail. Winners fail until they succeed.

Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners.

It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.

Have the end in mind and every day make sure your working towards it

Have the end in mind and every day make sure you're working towards it.

There is only one boss; the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

High expectations are the key to everything.

My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years.

Perseverance is the key to starting a successful business.

I'd get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It's a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.

With every obstacle that has happened to me in my life, my brain immediately says, 'Where is the hidden blessing?' In starting a business and growing a business, every day is learning how to manage obstacles.

I knew that I wanted to start my own business. I knew that I wanted to work for myself. I was no stranger to the word no. You just have to keep going.

Don't solicit feedback on your product, idea or your business just for validation purposes. You want to tell the people who can help move your idea forward, but if you're just looking to your friend, co-worker, husband or wife for validation, be careful. It can stop a lot of multimillion-dollar ideas in their tracks in the beginning.

I pledge to invest in women because I believe it offers one of the greatest returns on investment. I am committed to the belief that we would all be in a much better place if half the human race (women) were empowered to prosper, invent, be educated, start their own businesses, run for office essentially be given the chance to soar.

I'd never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn't exist.

The thing about fashion – it's like ducks going quack, quack quack. It's being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it.

What I most identify with is effortless fashion, looking as if someone's not put a lot of effort into their look.

I'm obsessed with the customer. I am the customer. I really don't think you can go wrong if you don't take your eye off of that. Serving the customer. How does she feel? I feel like the fashion industry has cared a lot about how we look but not about how we feel.

I feel that women have been neglected, unnecessarily neglected and mistreated personally by the fashion industry and shapewear in that entire category was a definite place that we were neglected.

Shapewear is the canvas and the clothes are the art.

I couldn't figure out what to wear under my clothes. The body shapers were too thick at the time.

I did not like the way I looked in a pair of white pants.

I'll mix a lot of things. I'll wear a Temperley dress with flip flops, or I might be in head-to-toe Gucci and have on a ring that I got from a gumball machine for 50 cents.

I didn't like the way it looked in white trousers, and I couldn't find anything to work underneath them.

I didn't want women to walk out of the dressing rooms feeling depressed and wanting a cocktail.

I have this system where if I buy three or four new things, I give away three or four things. Sometimes, it's a very painful system, but shopping is even better when you know that someone else who needs it will be getting. Keep the clothing karma going, I say.

I always joke and say I want to invent a comfortable stiletto and then retire.

When I'm bored or tired of being blonde, I'll throw on a wig. It's a lot less of a permanent way to change your look, and I have about 10 – all different colors, shapes, bobs, long hair, short, feathered.

I shopped for body shapers for the first time in my life and I was horrified. They were thick – it was like wearing workout clothes and they all had a leg band on one side that showed through the pants.

I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn't even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.

When I cut the feet out of my pantyhose that one time, I saw it as my sign. I had been visualizing being self employed prior to this happening. It was my mental preparation meeting the opportunity in that moment.

I cut the feet out of control top pantyhose one night, threw them on under my white pants and realized that the toning and shaping was perfect and that the hosiery material is thin enough that I could make shape wear out of it.

My saddlebags are why Spanx exist! Now that I have a baby I also have a muffin top.

Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale's here in the United States.

My training of cold-calling and everyone under the sun telling me no, and my keeping going, was a huge part of the first two years of Spanx.

I cut the feet off of a pair of panty hose and it allowed me to wear a pair of great strappy sandals. I didn't see lines but the hose rolled up at my feet - and that's how Spanx born.

I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.

The word 'Spanx' was funny. It made people laugh. No one ever forgot it.

Everything about my journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed me having to be a salesperson – from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers.

There is no reason to be hesitant becoming an entrepreneur is a learning experience.

It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen.

It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen.

Running a startup is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood.

The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.

Where do you put the fear when you choose to innovate? The fear is there, but you have to find a place to put it.

Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them.

There's no shortage of remarkable ideas, what's missing is the will to execute them.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.

In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.

You shouldn't focus on why you can't do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.

You shouldn't focus on why you can't do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.

I don't know the word 'quit.' Either I never did, or I have abolished it.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Believe you can and you're halfway there.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.

Nothing worth having comes easy.

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.

I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.

Work hard at work worth doing.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

I'm going to try to keep getting better.

I'm not as far along as Jack Nicklaus was at this age, but I'm trying.

I mean, as an athlete, as a competitor, you have to have that belief in yourself.

I smile at obstacles.

There's always stuff to work on. You're never there.

My will can move mountains.

Days when you just don't have it, you don't pack it in, you give it everything you've got. You grind it out.

Other golfers may outplay me from time to time, but they'll never outwork me.

I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled, and thanks to money and fame, I didn't have to go far to find them.

If you look at most of the guys, it looks like their peak years are in their 30s. Hopefully, that'll be the case for me. Obviously, there's a lot deeper competition, a lot more work I need to get done. I need to work very hard to accomplish those goals, but ultimately it's winning major championships that I want to do.

Pretty high. It's fun to see that all of the hard work that Hank and I have been putting into it is starting to pay off.

It played hard. It (the wind) was down off the left when I hit. When Robert (Allenby) hit it was in off the right. The wind was just swirling enough where it made it a little bit difficult.

That's a tough hole now. Like it wasn't an easy hole before - now it's even harder.

Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.

Chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

I work hard, and I do good, and I'm going to enjoy myself. I'm not going to let you restrict me.

Repeating is harder than anything else.

Easy is not an option. No days off. Never quit. Be fearless. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours of work.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.

How many people are completely successful in every department of life? Not one. The most successful people are the ones who learn from their mistakes and turn their failures into opportunities.

Outstanding people have one thing in common: An absolute sense of mission.

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

Don't wait until you have all the answers because you will never have all the answers.