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

Sam Walton

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Sam Walton
Age: 74 †
Born: 1918
Born: March 29
Died: 1992
Died: April 5
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Entrepreneur
Kingfisher
Oklahoma
Samuel Moore Walton
Conventional
Ignore
Swim
Wisdom
Way
Upstream

More quotes by Sam Walton

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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
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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
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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.
Sam Walton
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We're all working together that's the secret. And we'll lower the cost of living for everyone, not just in America, but we'll give the world an opportunity to see what it's like to save and have a better lifestyle, a better life for all. We're proud of what we've accomplished we've just begun.
Sam Walton
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Individuals don't win in business, teams do.
Sam Walton
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Curiosity doesn't kill the cat it kills the competition.
Sam Walton
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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
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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
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I not only knew I wanted to go into retailing, I also knew I wanted to go into business for myself.
Sam Walton
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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
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Some families sell their stocks off a little bit at a time to live high, and then - boom - somebody takes them over, and it all goes down the drain.
Sam Walton
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I've always been driven to buck the system.
Sam Walton
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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
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If one of our customers comes into the store without a smile, I'll give them one of mine.
Sam Walton
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...You can make a positive out of most any negative if you work at it hard enough.
Sam Walton
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Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.
Sam Walton
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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.
Sam Walton
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I loved retail from the beginning, and I still love it today.
Sam Walton
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High expectations are the key to everything.
Sam Walton
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Do it. Try it. Fix it.
Sam Walton