Top 106 Quotes & Sayings by Sam Walton - Page 2

I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment.

Don't get so stuck in your ways that you can't change.

You can learn from everybody.

There is only one boss. The customer.

High expectations is the key to everything.

I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I did that in college. I did it when I carried my papers. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them, I would call them by name, but even if I didn't I would still speak to them. Before long, I probably knew more students than anybody in the university, and they recognized me and considered me their friend.

A computer can tell you down to the dime what you've sold, but it can never tell you how much you could have sold.

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

I had confidence that as long as we did our work well and were good to our customers, there would be no limit to us.

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.

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

Some families sell their stocks off a little bit at a time to live high, and then - boom - somebody takes them over, and it all goes down the drain.

I had to get up everyday with my mind set on improving something.

After a lifetime of swimming upstream, I am convinced that one of the real secrets to Wal-mart's phenomenal success has been that very tendency.

I'd still say that visiting the stores and listening to our folks was one of the most valuable uses of my time as an executive. But really, our best ideas usually do come from the folks in the stores. Period.

I've owned about 18 airplanes over the years, and I've never bought one of them new.

Take the best out of everything and adapt it to your needs.

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

The job of senior management is to cultivate an environment where store managers can learn from the market and from each other.

Do it. Try it. Fix it.

I believe in always having goals, and always setting them high.

I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don't know if you're born with this kind of passion, or if you can learn it. But I do know you need it.

When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song.

We're all working together; that's the secret. And we'll lower the cost of living for everyone, not just in America, but we'll give the world an opportunity to see what it's like to save and have a better lifestyle, a better life for all. We're proud of what we've accomplished ; we've just begun.

It was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was...just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But...it was an outgrowth of everything we'd been doing since [1945]...And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making."

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.

I'd hate to see any descendants of mine fall into the category of what I'd call 'idle rich' - a group I've never had much use for.

Curiosity doesn't kill the cat; it kills the competition.

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.

Expenses should never exceed one percent of our purchases.

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

Lose your smile and lose your customers.

Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.

I learned a lesson which has stuck with me all through the years: you can learn from everybody. I didn't just learn from reading every retail publication I could get my hands on, I probably learned the most from studying what John Dunham was doing across the street

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

I loved retail from the beginning, and I still love it today.

There’s a lot more business out there in small town America than I ever dreamed of.

I not only knew I wanted to go into retailing, I also knew I wanted to go into business for myself.

I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of my biggest contributions to the later success of Wal-Mart.

It's just paper - all I own is a pickup truck and a little Wal-Mart stock.

I've always been driven to buck the system.

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

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.

Capital isn't hard to find; intuition, yes.

It is unhealthy to marinate in your own press clippings.