Sam Walton Quotes

You can learn from everybody.

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. It’s terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.

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

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

To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.

Most of us don’t invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.

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

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

Focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it.

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. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

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

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