Frederick W. Smith

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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