The Beauty And The Betrayal Of Business
Gave Birth To Success

Each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems.

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

Perhaps without that adversity I might not have been able to preserve later on when my financial burdens were redoubled. I learned then how to keep problems from crushing me. 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.

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.

It is impossible to grant someone happiness. The best you can do… is to give him the freedom to pursue happiness. Happiness is not a tangible thing, it's a byproduct - a byproduct of achievement.

I never considered my dreams wasted energy; they were invariably linked to some form of action. When I dreamed about having a lemonade stand, for example, it wasn't long before I set up a lemonade stand.