Sam Walton Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever.

Sam Walton
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

Sam Walton
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.

Sam Walton
You can make a positive out of most any negative if you work at it hard enough.

Sam Walton
I not only knew I wanted to go into retailing, I also knew I wanted to go into business for myself.

Sam Walton
I believe in always having goals, and always setting them high.

Sam Walton
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.

Sam Walton
It was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sam Walton
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.

Sam Walton
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.

Sam Walton
Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.

Sam Walton
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

Sam Walton
I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don't know if you're born with this kind of passion, or if you can learn it. But I do know you need it.

Sam Walton
I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment.

Sam Walton
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.

Sam Walton
If I had to single out one element in my life that has made a difference for me, it would be a passion to compete.

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

Sam Walton
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.

Sam Walton
Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitor.

Sam Walton
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.

Sam Walton
Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen,
well-timed, sincere words of praise.
They're absolutely free and worth a fortune

Sam Walton
Money and ownership alone aren't enough. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.

Sam Walton
Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don't become too predictable.

Sam Walton
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.

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

Sam Walton
The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign, 'Satisfaction Guaranteed'. They're still up there, and they have made all the difference.

Sam Walton
The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want

Sam Walton
A computer can tell you down to the dime what you've sold. But it can never tell you how much you could have sold.

Sam Walton
Job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owes anybody else a living.

Sam Walton