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

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.

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

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.

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”?

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.

Sometimes cheap is inexpensive. Sometimes it's cheap.

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

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.