James Sinegal Quotations

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.

It's like heroin: You do a little and you want a little bit more. Raising prices is the easy way.

Our attitude has always been that if you hire good people and provide good wages and good jobs and more than that - if you provide careers - that good things will happen to your company. I think we can say that that has been proved by the quality of people that we have and how they have built our organization.

Driving stock up from one day to the next is not what we are about. We are about building a good company and performing for the long term. I know everyone says that, that sounds trite when I repeat it that way, but that is and has always been our attitude about our business. If we do the right things, the stock price will take care of itself, and our shareholders will be rewarded.

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

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

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

You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

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