Sam Walton Quotes - Page 3

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

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 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.

We let folks know we're interested in them and that they're vital to us. cause they are.

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.

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

Expenses should never exceed one percent of our purchases.

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.

There is only one boss. The customer.

Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

High expectations is the key to everything.

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.

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.

Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.

"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."

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

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.

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.