Click here to read Shepherd Project’s discussion of The Founder.
Ray: You increase the supply and the demand will follow. Chicken and the egg.
Motivational Record: Persistence. Nothing is more important than persistence. Persistence and determination alone are all powerful.
Motivational Record, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson: A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Mac: Then the flies…it was like a scene out of Exodus!
Dick: Pharaoh would’ve let the Israelites go.
Mac: It’s better to have 1 great restaurant than 50 mediocre ones.
Ethel: It’s a good house and a good life, if only you slowed down enough to enjoy it.
Ray: [Driving through small towns, they all had a church with a cross and a courthouse with a flag—places people gather and feel safe.] They signify family and community. Places where people come together to break bread. McDonald’s can be the new American church… and it ain’t just open on Sundays—it’s open 7 days a week!
Ray: Be right. Just be right one time.
Mac: Did he just hang up on you? Dick: Yes, unless we just got violently disconnected.
Dick: [This deal with Coke] goes against our core beliefs of family and [not following strict commerce]. … I’m just not comfortable with that kind of crass commercialism.
Dick: A hot-head like that, you don’t know what he’s capable of.
Dick: If they all pop up at once, how’s he going to maintain standards?
Ray: I’ve lost interest in hobnobbing with the idle rich.
Ray: McDonalds is family.
Ray: I’m looking for scrappers, hustles, people who will roll up their sleeves.
Dick: There’s a wolf in the hen-house and we let him in…. I should have trusted my gut.
Harry: You don’t seem to realize what business you are in. You’re not in the burger business, you’re in the real estate business.
Ray: Contracts are like hearts—they’re meant to be broken.
Ray: I would sooner die than give her [his wife] one share of stock in McDonald’s.
Ray: You know what I came up with? I came up with the concept of winning.
Ray: Business is war. It’s dog eat dog; rat eat rat. If my competition was drowning, I’d walk up and put a hose in his mouth. Can you say the same?
Mac: No. And I wouldn’t want to.
Ray on why he had to have McDonald’s vs. any other burger joint: They all lack that one thing that made McDonald’s special. The name. That glorious name—McDonald’s. Sounds like America. It could be anything you want it to be. … A guy named McDonald, he’s clearly never going to be pushed around in life.
Dick: So, if you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em?
Ray: I saw that name… I knew right then and there I had to have it.
Ray: That’s where it started—right there on Lee street, McDonald’s #1.