The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.

I'd hate to see any descendants of mine fall into the category of what I'd call 'idle rich' - a group I've never had much use for.

Expenses should never exceed one percent of our purchases.

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.

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.

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

You can learn from everybody.