Empowering people turns Wal-Mart's culture into a competitive advantage.

Sam Walton instilled ownership of the products in the stores into the collective consciousness of every associate regardless of what job they did for the company.

Servant leadership is the foundation and the secret of Sam Walton's ability to achieve team synergy.

The key to competing and surviving against Wal-Mart is to focus your business into a niche or pocket where you can leverage your strengths in the local marketplace.

The key to Operations at Wal-Mart is their ability to maintain the highest standards while at the same time getting things done with lockstep execution.

When you compete with Wal-Mart, even if you think you've found a niche don't ever become complacent.

At Wal-Mart, if you couldn't explain an idea or a concept in simple terms on one page of paper Sam Walton considered the new idea too complicated to implement.

Wal-Mart's success strategies and tactics are easy to understand yet hard to duplicate.

Wal-Mart hires average people but squeezes above average performance and results out of them.

Differentiate your products, provide great service and don't even think about trying to compete with Wal-Mart on Price.

Sam Walton was a master storyteller who used illustrative stories to reinforce his cultural standards.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

I too have known joy and sadness, and, on the whole, I prefer joy.

'Tis done. We have become a nation.

I'm definitely different and I know that.

Making books is hard work. Some books are, of course, more demanding than others.

In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it

The circumstances which a man encounters with suffering are the result of his own mental inharmony.

I like to do movies, because I love becoming different characters, and telling different stories through different eyes, and affecting someone's life in one way or another.

I don't think the competition's so rough, within the majority of movies made in Hollywood.

Hope is not attached to outcomes but is a state of mind.