Sam Walton

Celebrate your success and find humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show enthusiasm. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song.

All that hullabaloo about somebody's net worth is just stupid, and it's made my life a lot more complex and difficult.

Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.

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

I got into retailing because I wanted a real job.

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

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

Give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.

We're all working together; that's the secret.

Each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community.

Capital isn't scarce; vision is.

If you want a successful business, your people must feel that you are working for them - not that they are working for you.

If you don't listen to your customers, someone else will.

There's absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary, working people can accomplish if they're given the opportunity and encouragement to do their best.

There is only one boss. The customer.

I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America. I am just trying to get ideas, any kind of ideas that will help our company. Most of us don't invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.

The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign, ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’. They're still up there, and they have made all the difference.

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

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.

Job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owes anybody else a living.

The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want