You take an educated gamble. If you don't occasionally make a mistake, you're not doing your job.

Our attitude has always been that if you hire good people and provide good wages and good jobs and more than that - if you provide careers - that good things will happen to your company. I think we can say that that has been proved by the quality of people that we have and how they have built our organization.

If somehow a proclamation were made that C.E.O.'s could only make a maximum of $300,000 a year, you would not have any shortage of very qualified men and women seeking the jobs.

Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company.

It doesn't do Costco any good if nobody can afford to buy anything.

It is improper for one person to take credit when it takes so many people to build a successful organization. When you try to be top dong, you don't create loyalty. It you can't give credit (and take blame), you will drown in you inability to inspire.

I say at our management conferences that the amount Wal-Mart grows in just one year is the equivalent of Costco's size.