Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else.

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.

I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been.

I'd still say that visiting the stores and listening to our folks was one of the most valuable uses of my time as an executive. But really, our best ideas usually do come from the folks in the stores. Period.

I learned a lesson which has stuck with me all through the years: you can learn from everybody. I didn't just learn from reading every retail publication I could get my hands on, I probably learned the most from studying what John Dunham was doing across the street

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

I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I did that in college. I did it when I carried my papers. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them, I would call them by name, but even if I didn't I would still speak to them. Before long, I probably knew more students than anybody in the university, and they recognized me and considered me their friend.