Charles Fishman Quotes & Sayings

The small stuff matters. The company that became the largest and most powerful in history isn't a military contractor or a car company. It isn't the result of savvy lobbyists in Washington, or the happenstance of controlling the supply of petroleum, or some kind of cabal that is beyond the understanding of ordinary people. The largest and most powerful company in history is built by each of us handing over three single dollar bills over and over again. — Charles Fishman

For all the folks whose job it was to be ready for [Hurricane] Katrina, but who weren't, from the Oval Office, right down the chain of command to the New Orleans police department, Wal-Mart was a vivid reproach. — Charles Fishman

How many companies can say that the amount of customers who use their services second most often, and spend the second most amount of money with them, are "very negative"? — Charles Fishman

If you know nothing about maintaining a [lawn] mower, Wal-Mart has helped make that ignorance irrelevant ... the lawn mowers at Wal-Mart are cheap enough to be disposable. — Charles Fishman

They had the lure of the Wal-Mart volume," [Jim] Wier said. "Once you get hooked on the volume, it's like getting hooked on cocaine. You've created a monster for yourself. — Charles Fishman

Wal-Mart is so large, its reach so great, that it has created an ecosystem in which its suppliers and competitors, and their suppliers and competitors, and their customers, all operate. Wal-Mart sets the metabolism, it sets the rules, of that ecosystem. Wal-Mart has inexorably changed our expectations as shoppers - and the Wal-Mart effect also extends to consumers who never shop at Wal-Mart. Likewise, Wal-Mart has reshaped the companies that supply it - and it has also reset the pace and the competitive landscape even for companies that try to do business outside the Wal-Mart ecosystem. — Charles Fishman

Every time you see the Wal-Mart smiley face, whistling and knocking down the prices, somewhere there's a factory worker being kicked in the stomach. - Sherrie Ford — Charles Fishman

Sometimes cheap is inexpensive. Sometimes it's cheap. — Charles Fishman

We want clean air, clean water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world. Yet we aren't willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions. — Charles Fishman

Wal-Mart benefits from the impression that globalization is some kind of unmanageable economic weather system out of the control of everyone, affecting all players with indifference, benefiting those who happened to be properly prepared. — Charles Fishman

Wal-mart has done such a superb job of austerity, from start to finish, that austerity is all that's left. — Charles Fishman

Who better than Wal-Mart, after all, to make a kilowatt of electricity go twice as far, or a gallon of fuel move our trucks move three times the distance?" -Wal-Mart ad — Charles Fishman