You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

You destroy the initiative of the working people if they don't feel they have a fighting chance to be a part of the American Dream.

One of the strengths of our nation has always been a strong middle class who could afford their own homes and send their children to school.

We would rather have our employees running our business.

We are a company that promotes 100% within the company.

You don't have a very motivated working class, it starts to affect the dynamics of the economy. If workers are disenchanted and disenfranchised, productivity losses will go along with that.

It doesn't do Costco any good if nobody can afford to buy anything.

If we take care of the business and keep our eye on the goal line, the stock price will take care of itself.

We want to turn our inventory faster than our people.

In the final analysis, you get what you pay for.

We've always been in favor of improved wages for workers. When you have a strong middle class, they want to buy more stuff at Costco.

When employees are happy, they are your very best ambassadors.

We always strive to be the best in the wage package.

Everybody is watching you every minute anyways. If they think the message you're sending out is phony, they're going to say, 'Who does he think he is?' It's again good business. But it is also an obligation.

I say at our management conferences that the amount Wal-Mart grows in just one year is the equivalent of Costco's size.

I think that most of the people running companies today are motivated and pay is a small portion of the motivation.

If somehow a proclamation were made that C.E.O.'s could only make a maximum of $300,000 a year, you would not have any shortage of very qualified men and women seeking the jobs.

If you're going to say to all the people that you're working with, 'We want you to treat the customers honestly; don't lie and don't cheat,' it is somewhat hypocritical if you're not following the same rules.

If you've got to work for the rest of your life, you'd better do something you'll enjoy.

It doesn't do much good to have a quality image, whether it's with the facility or whether it's with the merchandise, if you don't have real quality people taking care of your customers.

Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company.

Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company. The message is that all brilliance emanates from the top; that the worker on the floor of the store or the factory is insignificant.

Paying your employees well is not only the right thing to do but it makes for good business.

The message is that all brilliance emanates from the top; that the worker on the floor of the store or the factory is insignificant.

When you hire good people, and you provide good jobs and good wages and a career, good things are going to happen.

You take an educated gamble. If you don't occasionally make a mistake, you're not doing your job.

When employees are happy they are your very best ambassadors.

Its like heroin You do a little and you want a little bit more. Raising prices is the easy way.

Our attitude is that if you hire good people and pay them a fair wage, then good things will happen for the company.

Paying good wages is not in opposition to good productivity.

Natural resources are so vast that no single individual or business is going to protect them; they don't have an incentive to.

The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

Howard Hughes himself was a regular at the restaurant, and in a way it became his headquarters, too. Howard had recently relocated to Las Vegas, so when he wanted to do business in Los Angeles, he went into the back of our restaurant to use the telephone.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

We mean by "politics" the people's business - the most important business there is.

Slovakia's joining the OECD in 1999 is totally dependent on meeting economic reforms required such as transparency and legislation that permits fair and open conduct of trade and business.

The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform.

It's a very hard and competitive business in which you have to fight every day in order to impose yourself.

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Chicago kept industry, attracted new business, became the center for convention trade and transportation.

I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

The surest way to return to the people's business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.