Quotes from Sam Walton

In the beginning, I was so chintzy I really didn't pay my employees well.

I don't know what would have happened to Wal-Mart if we had laid low and never stirred up the competition. My guess is that we would have remained a strictly regional operator.

I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America.

Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.

The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say.

I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?

Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don't know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.

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

Money and ownership alone aren't enough. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.

One thing my and mother and dad shared completely was their approach to money - they just didn't spend it.

Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who's going to have a great idea.

...You can make a positive out of most any negative if you work at it hard enough.

Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitor.

If everybody is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.

The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.

Communicate everything you can to your associates. The more they know, the more they care. Once they care, there is no stopping them.

I guess in all my years, what I heard more than anything else was: a mere town cannot support a discount store for very long.

All of us profit from being corrected - if we're corrected in a positive way.

I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been.

Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune

If one of our customers comes into the store without a smile, I'll give them one of mine.

Lose your smile and lose your customers.

There are only four things in life that matter. The first is happiness and I'll sell you the other three for a dollar.