Herb Kelleher

Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.

Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.

The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.

I tell my employees that we're in the service business, and it's incidental that we fly airplanes.

I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn't get off the ground.

The clear, unmistakable sign of a bureaucrat is somebody who worries about whether he has a window.

The spirit of Southwest Airlines is exuberant, it's caring, it's dedicated, it's diligent, it's fun, it's rewarding, it's a joy.

I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.

A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.

It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it.

One piece of advice that always stuck in my mind is that people should be respected and trusted as people, not because of their position or title.

Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.

When I started working on Southwest Airlines, I kid you not, only people flying on business and very wealthy people ever flew.

I've found that many of the greatest ideas surface in bars because that's where many people cultivate inspiration.

Just because you don't announce your plan doesn't mean you don't have one.

I'd say my mother made more of a difference to me than anyone else did. I know that's a conventional and perhaps mundane answer, but my family was blown apart at the start of World War II.

Positions and titles mean absolutely nothing. They're just adornments; they don't represent the substance of anybody. Every person and every job is worth as much as any other person and any other job.

You can't have a mid-life crisis in the airline industry because every day is a crisis.

Wild Turkey whiskey and Philip Morris cigarettes are essential to the maintenance of human life!

I think my greatest moment in business was when the first Southwest airplane arrived after four years of litigation, and I walked up to it and I kissed that baby on the lips and I cried.

It takes nerves of steel to stay neurotic.