Expenses should never exceed one percent of our purchases.

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.

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

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.

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

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