John Mackey

“I always like to say that our brand or our philosophy has always been kind of this marriage between the 'food as indulgence,' and it's also been about 'food as health,' that food is vitality.”

“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.”

“To me, you make a tradeoff. It might be a little bit more expensive. But you're getting a better tasting, higher quality food that's going to be better for your health and better for the environment.”

“We wanted to preserve as many jobs as possible, so when our sales continued to decline in August 2008, we did about a 5 percent reduction of our global staff. But in order not to cut any more jobs, we froze everybody's pay and put a hiring freeze on.”

“The world is getting more connected through technology and travel. Cuisines are evolving. Some people are scared of globalization, but I think people will always take pride in cultural heritage.”

“I believe that all forms of socialism have been proven over time to result in a loss of both economic and civil liberties, with increasing poverty.”

“Any type of political ideology is going to have a lot of different variants of it.”

“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.”

“When I'm hiring leaders, I pay a lot of attention to what their peers and what people who report to them say about them. We want people who relate well with their peers and cooperate in an exchange of information rather than being overly competitive.”

“I was in my early 20s and open to alternative lifestyles. I thought, 'I bet you get a lot of attractive, interesting women in a vegetarian co-op.'”

“Whole Foods has a good health care plan.”

“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.”

“The more profit we make, the more stores we can open, the more donations we can make to our community, the more responsible citizens we can be for the environment. It's all interactive. It's all connected together. There's no separation.”

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

“Food is intensely pleasurable, and people are afraid that if they change the way they eat, they'll stop having pleasure.”

“There is nothing wrong with making money, but that's not particularly inspiring.”

“I tell students and young professionals all the time to follow their hearts, do what they truly love, and if it's business, run it by being grounded in ethical consciousness.”

“Libertarians are constantly arguing with each other who is the most pure libertarian and who is most ideologically pure.”

“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.”

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