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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

John Mackey Quotes

Profits are one of the most important goals of any successful business, and investors are one of the most important constituencies of public businesses.

– John Mackey

Good leaders need to be able to connect to all of those around them. This is especially true at Whole Foods, where we have a very team-oriented culture.

– John Mackey

We knew it was going to be a market, and we knew it was a food market. Well, what kind of food market? It’s kind of natural foods, kind of organic foods. So, we eventually settled on Whole Foods Market.

– John Mackey

More than once in the history of Whole Foods Market, the company was unable to collectively evolve until I myself was able to evolve – in other words, I was holding the company back. My personal growth enabled the company to evolve.

– John Mackey

I think for any small business that’s bootstrapped, the overwhelming challenge initially is getting to positive cash flow.

– John Mackey

People need to eat whole food plant foods, primarily… whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. That diet supports our lives. We ought to live to be 90 or 100 without getting any diseases.

– John Mackey

I kind of have this sense of mission now when we talk about success: I’d really like Whole Foods to contribute to the healing of America, and the success of that may be measured in decades rather than in months, but I think we’re on the way to doing it.

– John Mackey

One of the most important things we do is we’ve organized our stores and our workforce into teams.

– John Mackey

A healthy diet is a solution to many of our health-care problems. It’s the most important solution.

– John Mackey

Operating under the conscious capitalism model will show that businesses are the true value creators that can push all of humanity upward for continuous improvement.

– John Mackey

I think for leadership positions, emotional intelligence is more important than cognitive intelligence. People with emotional intelligence usually have a lot of cognitive intelligence, but that’s not always true the other way around.

– John Mackey

The great thing about a culture is that once you really get it going, it evolves on its own. It’s self-organizing. It’s dynamic. It just feeds on itself.

– John Mackey

One of the sad things about retiring is that you just become increasingly irrelevant. The world flows around you, and you don’t seem to be impacting it any longer.

– John Mackey

I’m very encouraged by millennials and their drive to make the world a better place.

– John Mackey

I learned how to cook, began reading books on food. I began to understand about nutrition. It never had occurred to me that what you ate could affect how you felt. It could affect your health. It seems obvious now, but at age 23 or 22 or whatever I was, it wasn’t obvious at all.

– John Mackey

The way most people approach business – and the way they mostly teach in business school – involves the analytical mind. It divides it up and looks at parts in isolation.

– John Mackey

It started when I moved into a vegetarian co-op back in the ’70s, and that’s really when I had my food consciousness awakened. I learned how to cook, and eventually I became the food buyer for the entire co-op. Not long after that, I went to work for a small natural food store in Austin, and I became very excited and passionate about it.

– John Mackey

I like games that are complex – the deeper you get into the game, the more there is to learn.

– John Mackey

Customers want high-quality food, good service, and good store experience, and most retailers fail to deliver on those.

– John Mackey

Whole Foods has a good health care plan.

– John Mackey

Whole Foods Market tries to embody all of the principles of conscious capitalism all the time, but like any person or company, we sometimes fall short.

– John Mackey

In many companies, the person who talks the best usually gets the job. I got snowed by a few of those people over the years. I still think communication is important, but I don’t think there’s always a correlation between being a great communicator and other virtues that make for a great leader.

– John Mackey

It’s competition that forces companies to get out of their complacency.

– John Mackey

I reject the premise that liberal and libertarian values are necessarily in conflict. In fact, I often self-identify as a ‘classical liberal.’

– John Mackey

People in America are addicted to sugar and to fat and to salt.

– John Mackey

Healthier team members get a bigger food discount. We give our sickest team members an option to go through what we call the Total Health Immersion, where we take them off for a week, and we do intensive diet-and-lifestyle education.

– John Mackey

As a company grows, its purpose grows with it. It has the potential to evolve your purpose.

– John Mackey

Not everyone is born to run a $4 billion company. There is no magic formula. I’ve learned, and I’ve grown by learning. That’s why I’ve enjoyed being in business so much: It’s stretched me.

– John Mackey

I’ve been doing long-distance backpacking since 2002 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail. You start to calm down and relax and get into the slower rhythm of nature.

– John Mackey

Free enterprise capitalism has been the most powerful creative system of social cooperation and human progress ever conceived, but its perception and its role in society have been distorted.

– John Mackey

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