There is only one boss. The customer.

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 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.

"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."

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

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.

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.