Frederick W. Smith Quotations

A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can.

Information about the package is as important as the package itself.

Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves - and by which they are willing to be judged.

A lot of the economy is indeed being supplied by goods that are produced offshore. And much of the reason for that is societal.

A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service: The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible.

I’m not afraid to take a swing and miss.

My four years in the Marine Corps left me with an indelible understanding of the value of leadership skills.

Leadership is simply the ability of an individual to coalesce the efforts of other individuals toward achieving common goals. It boils down to looking after your people and ensuring that, from top to bottom, everyone feels part of the team.

There is no free market for oil. It's controlled by a cartel, OPEC.

I do not believe I could have built FedEx without the skills I learned from the Marine Corps.

Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.

If you look historically, what creates growth and wealth is innovation and investment, and increase in scale - more customers.

My innovation involved taking an idea from the telecommunications and banking industries, and applying that idea to transportation business.

Only electricity can give the transport sector the flexibility to switch fuels when one or more become too expensive.

The United States tax system today is very prejudiced towards financialization, leverage, and lack of investment.

Every time we make an investment decision at FedEx, we ask ourselves: 'What is the return on this investment?'

I am not someone who tends to advocate for increased government involvement in the private sector.

Beginning in 1973 and then acts in '77, '78, 1980, 1994 and then into the 21st century in the international arena, governments have steadily gotten out of the transportation business.

The biggest part of our business has always been moving things, not paper. With the Internet, people in Mississippi can buy things from Macedonia, without regard to time or place or quantity.

The tax rate of 35 percent is impossible to provide an incentive to the large corporations, that have $1.7 trillion offshore, to put their money back in the United States.

We're forecasting it will get better, but we'd like to see it get better faster,

I was so despondent, wondering what I am going to do, and then the minister herself called.

China is changing the world's economic landscape, and FedEx has been part of this great change since we established express operations in China more than 20 years ago. This strategic investment in the long-term growth of China will broaden and deepen our relationship by improving access to important markets, fueling economic development for years to come.

This strategic investment in the long-term growth of China will broaden and deepen our relationship by improving access to important markets.

We cannot be certain right now how the events of last week will ultimately impact the U.S. and global economies, the air transportation industry and FedEx, ... Nonetheless, we see our company well positioned to significantly increase growth, profitability, returns and cash flow as the global economies improve and trading activities increase.

FDX Corp. is benefiting from the accelerated move to fast-cycle production and distribution methods, the growth in electronic commerce and supply chain re-engineering.

Despite uncertainty related to Katrina and other economic conditions, we remain optimistic about global trade and expect continued economic expansion in the U.S. and in the international markets.

It's become increasingly difficult to find places with the proper size and other characteristics.

If you keep working at it, in the last analysis, you win. They've got to kill us a hundred times. All we have to do is kill them once.

In the near-term, there are economic concerns but overall we see continued improvements in the global economy.

Gary's leadership transformed FedEx Kinko's into a global network offering the industry's broadest range of business services and helped change the way business is done in the digital age. I have the utmost confidence that Ken will take FedEx Kinko's to new heights by building on this outstanding record of innovation and service to our customers.

I paid every effort to seek deregulation throughout FEDEX's start-up and expansion periods, because the biggest impediment to our growth was the government regulations that restricted new entry into the air cargo market.

A good Christian is a velvet-covered brick.

It is impossible to manage the health care requirements of tens of millions of American citizens at the federal level. It is impossible to manage all of the permutations of people's economic aspirations and lives through a complex tax code. It is impossible to try to second-guess the market. It is impossible, from a managerial standpoint, for the federal government to do the things it is trying to do today.