Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company.

You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

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.

Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company. The message is that all brilliance emanates from the top; that the worker on the floor of the store or the factory is insignificant.

You don't have a very motivated working class, it starts to affect the dynamics of the economy. If workers are disenchanted and disenfranchised, productivity losses will go along with that.

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

I think that most of the people running companies today are motivated and pay is a small portion of the motivation.