"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."

Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who's going to have a great idea.

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

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

Capital isn't hard to find; intuition, yes.

You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.

I was asked what I thought about the recession. I thought about it and decided not to take part.