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

There's absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary, working people can accomplish if they're given the opportunity and encouragement to do their best.

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.

Exceed your customer's expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more.

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.

The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want. And really, if you think about it from the point of view of the customer, you want everything: a wide assortment of good quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking; a pleasant shopping experience.

"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."