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I Strongly Believe That Missionaries Make Better Products. They Care More. For A Missionary, It's Not Just About The Business. There Has To Be A Business, And The Business Has To Make Sense, But That's Not Why You Do It. You Do It Because You Have Something Meaningful That Motivates You.

-Jeff Bezos

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I Strongly Believe That

Jeff Bezos

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I Strongly Believe That Missionaries Make Better Products. They Care More. For A Missionary, It's Not Just About The Business. There Has To Be A Business, And The Business Has To Make Sense, But That's Not Why You Do It. You Do It Because You Have Something Meaningful That Motivates You.

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You Have To Use Your Judgment. In Cases Like That, We Say, 'let's Be Simple Minded. We Know This Is A Feature That's Good For Customers. Let's Do It.

Our Alliance With Toysrus.com Has Proven To Be A Great Win For Customers, And We've Looked Forward To Taking The Next Step By Introducing The New Babiesrus.com Teamed With Amazon.com Store Since We Forged The Alliance Last August.

What Characteristics Do I Look For When Hiring Somebody? That's One Of The Questions I Ask When Interviewing. I Want To Know What Kind Of People They Would Hire.

You Know, If You Make A Customer Unhappy They Won't Tell Five Friends, They'll Tell 5,000 Friends. So, We Are At A Point Now Where We Have All Of The Things We Need To Build An Important And Lasting Company, And If We Don't, It Will Be Shame On Us.

In The End, We Are Our Choices.

Things Never Go Smoothly.

You Don't Want To Negotiate The Price Of Simple Things You Buy Every Day.

Determine What Your Customers Need, And Work Backwards.

Teachers, Who Are Really Good Create That Environment Where You Can Be Very Satisfied By The Process Of Learning. If You Do Something And You Find It A Very Satisfying Experience Then You Want To Do More Of It. The Great Teachers Somehow Convey In Their Very Attitude And Their Words And Their Actions And Everything They Do That This Is An Important Thing You're Learning. You End Up Wanting To Do More Of It And More Of It And More Of It. That's A Real Talent Some People Have To Convey The Importance Of That And To Reflect It Back To The Students.

We're Building A Unique Global Platform...in The Last 18 Months We Found That Sellers And Partners Are Interested In Complementing Their Online And Offline Businesses With Amazon's Platform

We Watch Our Competitors, Learn From Them, See The Things That They Were Doing For Customers And Copy Those Things As Much As We Can.

Strip Malls Are History.

The Book Is Not Really The Container For The Book. The Book Itself Is The Narrative. It's The Thing That People Create.

We Like To Pioneer, We Like To Explore, We Like To Go Down Dark Alleys And See What's On The Other Side.

Seek Instant Gratification - Or The Elusive Promise Of It - And Chances Are You'll Find A Crowd There Ahead Of You.

Work Hard, Have Fun And Make History.

Mediocre Theoretical Physicists Make No Progress. They Spend All Their Time Understanding Other People's Progress.

Maintain A Firm Grasp Of The Obvious At All Times.

If You Build A Great Product Or Service, People Will Talk About It. But It Starts With Having Something That's Worth Talking About.

Your Margin Is My Opportunity.

I Don't Want To Use My Creative Energy On Somebody Else's User Interface.

We Also Have No Incentive Compensation Of Any Kind. And The Reason We Don’t Is Because It Is Detrimental To Teamwork.

You Don't Chose Your Passion, Your Passion Choses You

If You Make Customers Unhappy In The Physical World, They Might Each Tell 6 Friends. If You Make Customers Unhappy On The Internet, They Can Each Tell 6,000 Friends.

Our Point Of View Is We Will Sell More If We Help People Make Purchasing Decisions.

One Of The Things That Gets Me Up In The Morning Is Knowing That Customer Expectations Are Always Rising, And I Find That Very Exciting.

You Know, We Love Stories And We Love Narrative; We Love To Get Lost In An Author's World.

I Told All Of Our Original Investors That They Would Lose Their Money For Sure.

Millions Of People Were Inspired By The Apollo Program. I Was Five Years Old When I Watched Apollo 11 Unfold On Television, And Without Any Doubt It Was A Big Contributor To My Passions For Science, Engineering, And Exploration.

We've Got Thousands Of Investors Counting On Us. And We're A Team Of Thousands Of Employees All Counting On Each Other. That's Fun.

If You're Long-term Oriented, Customer Interests And Shareholder Interests Are Aligned.

One Of The Things It Was Obvious You Could Do With An Online Store Is Have A Much More Complete Selection.

The Best Customer Service Is If The Customer Doesn't Need To Call You, Doesn't Need To Talk To You. It Just Works.

Market Leadership Can Translate Directly To Higher Revenue, Higher Profitability, Greater Capital Velocity And Correspondingly Stronger Returns On Invested Capital.

What's Dangerous Is Not To Evolve.

I Think One Of The Things People Don't Understand Is We Can Build More Shareholder Value By Lowering Product Prices Than We Can By Trying To Raise Margins. It's A More Patient Approach, But We Think It Leads To A Stronger, Healthier Company. It Also Serves Customers Much, Much Better.

If You Only Do Things Where You Know The Answer In Advance, Your Company Goes Away.

Amazon Pages And Amazon Upgrade Leverage Amazon's Existing 'search Inside The Book' Technology To Give Customers Unusual Flexibility In How They Buy And Read Books, .. In Collaboration With Our Publishing Partners, We're Working Hard To Make The World's Books Instantly Accessible Anytime And Anywhere.

For Every Leader In The Company, Not Just For Me, There Are Decisions That Can Be Made By Analysis. These Are The Best Kinds Of Decisions!

Your Brand Is What People Say About You When You're Not In The Room

For People Who Are Readers, Reading Is Important To Them.

If You're Truly Obsessed Over Customers, It'll Cover A Lot Of Errors.

Servant Leadership

It's Hard To Find Things That Won't Sell Online.

Digital Marketing

Percentage Margins Are Not One Of The Things We Are Seeking To Optimize. It’s The Absolute Dollar Free Cash Flow Per Share That You Want To Maximize, And If You Can Do That By Lowering Margins, We Would Do That. So If You Could Take The Free Cash Flow, That’s Something That Investors Can Spend. Investors Can’t Spend Percentage Margins.

On The Internet, Companies Are Scale Businesses, Characterized By High Fixed Costs And Relatively Low Variable Costs. You Can Be Two Sizes: You Can Be Big, Or You Can Be Small. It's Very Hard To Be Medium. A Lot Of Medium-sized Companies Had The Financing Rug Pulled Out From Under Them Before They Could Get Big.

There Are Two Ways To Extend A Business. Take Inventory Of What You're Good At And Extend Out From Your Skills. Or Determine What Your Customers Need And Work Backward, Even If It Requires Learning New Skills. Kindle Is An Example Of Working Backward.

There's So Much Stuff That Has Yet To Be Invented. There's So Much New That's Going To Happen. People Don't Have Any Idea Yet How Impactful The Internet Is Going To Be And That This Is Still Day 1 In Such A Big Way.

A Lot Of People – And I’m Just Not One Of Them – Believe That You Should Live For The Now. I Think What You Do Is Think About The Great Expanse Of Time Ahead Of You And Try To Make Sure That You’re Planning For That In A Way That’s Going To Leave You Ultimately Satisfied. This Is The Way It Works For Me.

The One Thing That Offends Me The Most Is When I Walk By A Bank And See Ads Trying To Convince People To Take Out Second Mortgages On Their Home So They Can Go On Vacation. That's Approaching Evil.

Failure Comes Part And Parcel With Invention. It’s Not Optional.

It Is Very Difficult To Get People To Focus On The Most Important Things When You're In Boom Times.

If There’s One Reason We Have Done Better Than Of Our Peers In The Internet Space Over The Last Six Years, It Is Because We Have Focused Like A Laser On Customer Experience.

I’m A Big Fan Of All-you-can-eat Plans, Because They’re Simpler For Customers.

Cultures, For Better Or Worse, Are Very Stable.

I Have A Strongly Held Belief That One Of The Reasons That Amazon Has Been Successful Is Because We Do Not Obsess Over Competitors. Instead We Obsess Over Customers.

We've Done Price Elasticity Studies, And The Answer Is Always That We Should Raise Prices. We Don't Do That, Because We Believe -- And We Have To Take This As An Article Of Faith -- That By Keeping Our Prices Very, Very Low, We Earn Trust With Customers Over Time, And That That Actually Does Maximize Free Cash Flow Over The Long Term.

I Went To Princeton Specifically To Study Physics.

Life's Too Short To Hang Out With People Who Aren't Resourceful.

Our Vision Is Every Book Ever Printed In Any Language [fetched And Viewable On Our Ebook Kindle Device] In Under 60 Seconds.

Cleverness Is A Gift, Kindness Is A Choice.

Percentage Margins Don't Matter. What Matters Always Is Dollar Margins: The Actual Dollar Amount. Companies Are Valued Not On Their Percentage Margins, But On How Many Dollars They Actually Make, And A Multiple Of That.

I Love My Life. I Love Being An Inventor.

Love Of My Life

What I Want To Talk To You About Today Is The Difference Between Gifts And Choices. Cleverness Is A Gift, Kindness Is A Choice. Gifts Are Easy - They’re Given After All. Choices Can Be Hard. You Can Seduce Yourself With Your Gifts If You’re Not Careful, And If You Do, It’ll Probably Be To The Detriment Of Your Choices.

We Are At The 1908 Hurley Washing Machine Stage With The Internet.

A Company Shouldn't Get Addicted To Being Shiny, Because Shiny Doesn't Last.

Any Business Plan Won't Survive Its First Encounter With Reality. The Reality Will Always Be Different. It Will Never Be The Plan.

The Thing About Inventing Is You Have To Be Both Stubborn And Flexible. The Hard Part Is Figuring Out When To Be Which.

Invention Requires A Long-term Willingness To Be Misunderstood.

Am I Going To Regret Leaving Wall Street? No. Will I Regret Missing The Beginning Of The Internet? Yes.

I Wanted To Project Myself Forward To Age 80 And Say, ‘ok, I’m Looking Back On My Life. I Want To Minimise The Number Of Regrets I Have.’ And I Knew That When I Was 80, I Was Not Going To Regret Having Tried This. I Was Not Going To Regret Trying To Participate In This Thing Called The Internet That I Thought Was Going To Be A Really Big Deal. I Knew That If I Failed, I Wouldn’t Regret That. But I Knew The One Thing I Might Regret Is Not Ever Having Tried. I Knew That That Would Haunt Me Every Day.

You're Not Going To Make Hemingway Better By Adding Animations.

But There's Still So Much You Can Do With Technology To Improve The Customer Experience. And That's The Sense In Which I Believe It's Still Day One, And That It's Early In The Day. If Anything, The Rate Of Change Is Accelerating.

The Balance Of Power Is Shifting Toward Consumers And Away From Companies The Right Way To Respond To This If You Are A Company Is To Put The Vast Majority Of Your Energy, Attention And Dollars Into Building A Great Product Or Service And Put A Smaller Amount Into Shouting About It, Marketing It.

My Own View Is That Every Company Requires A Long-term View.

If You Look At Academic Studies, You Can See That Stock Prices Are Most Closely Correlated With Cash Flow. It's Such A Straightforward Number. Cash Flow Is What Will Drive Shareholder Returns.

The Three Most Important Things In Retail Are Location, Location, Location. The Three Most Important Things For Our Consumer Business Are Technology, Technology, Technology.

Infrastructure Web Services Had To Happen.

Where You Are Going To Spend Your Time And Your Energy Is One Of The Most Important Decisions You Get To Make In Life.

If You Do Build A Great Experience, Customers Tell Each Other About That. Word Of Mouth Is Very Powerful.

If You Are Going To Do Large-scale Invention, You Have To Be Willing To Do Three Things: You Must Be Willing To Fail; You Have To Be Willing To Think Long Term; And You Have To Be Willing To Be Misunderstood For Long Periods Of Time.

Be Proud Of Your Choices, Not Your Gifts.

To Get Something New Done You Have To Be Stubborn And Focused, To The Point That Others Might Find Unreasonable.

I Think That, Ah, I'm A Very Goofy Sort Of Person In Many Ways.

If We Can Keep Our Competitors Focused On Us While We Stay Focused On The Customer, Ultimately We'll Turn Out All Right.

Customer Satisfaction

People Loved Their Horses, Too. But You Don't Keep Riding Your Horse To Work Just Because You Love It.

The Most Important Single Thing Is To Focus Obsessively On The Customer. Our Goal Is To Be Earth's Most Customer-centric Company.

I Definitely Believe People Should Pay For Copyrighted Works. And The Laws Are Sufficient: They Already Require You To Pay For Copyright Work. There's No Confusion. The Problem Is...it's A Heck Of A Lot Easier To Steal Mp3s Than To Buy Them.

The Human Brain Is An Incredible Pattern-matching Machine.

No, Communication Is Terrible!

No Communication

You Want To Look At What Other Companies Are Doing. It's Very Important Not To Be Hermetically Sealed. But You Don't Want To Look At It As If, 'ok, We're Going To Copy That.' You Want To Look At It And Say, 'that's Very Interesting. What Can We Be Inspired To Do As A Result Of That?' And Then Put Your Own Unique Twist On It.

Ebooks Had To Happen.

Obsess About Customers, Not Competitors.

If You Want To Be Inventive, You Have To Be Willing To Fail.

I've Not Seen An Effective Manager Or Leader Who Can't Spend Some Fraction Of Time Down In The Trenches... If They Don't Do That They Get Out Of Touch With Reality, And Their Whole Thought And Management Process Becomes Abstract And Disconnected.

Feel Free To Cover Amazon Any Way You Want. Feel Free To Cover Jeff Bezos Any Way You Want.

What We Need To Do Is Always Lean Into The Future; When The World Changes Around You And When It Changes Against You - What Used To Be A Tail Wind Is Now A Head Wind - You Have To Lean Into That And Figure Out What To Do Because Complaining Isn't A Strategy.

I'm Skeptical Of Any Mission That Has Advertisers At Its Centerpiece.

A Brand For A Company Is Like A Reputation For A Person. You Earn Reputation By Trying To Do Hard Things Well.

Not The Outcome Any Of Us Wanted.

If You Think About The Long Term Then You Can Really Make Good Life Decisions That You Won’t Regret Later.

If You Don't Understand The Details Of Your Business You Are Going To Fail.

Everything You Are Comes From Your Choices.

We've Had Three Big Ideas At Amazon That We've Stuck With For 18 Years, And Thy're The Reason We're Successful: Put The Customer First. Invent. And Be Patient.

E-mail Has Some Magical Ability To Turn Off The Politeness Gene In A Human Being.

I'm Going To Go Do This Crazy Thing. I'm Going To Start This Company Selling Books Online.

If You Invent Frequently And Are Willing To Fail, Then You Never Get To That Point Where You Really Need To Bet The Whole Company.

I Strongly Believe That Missionaries Make Better Products. They Care More. For A Missionary, It's Not Just About The Business. There Has To Be A Business, And The Business Has To Make Sense, But That's Not Why You Do It. You Do It Because You Have Something Meaningful That Motivates You.

All Businesses Need To Be Young Forever. If Your Customer Base Ages With You, You're Woolworth's.

We See Our Customers As Invited Guests To A Party, And We Are The Hosts. It's Our Job Every Day To Make Every Important Aspect Of The Customer Experience A Little Bit Better.

We Are Stubborn On Vision. We Are Flexible On Details.

The World Is Littered With Corpses That Predicted Technology In A Particular Arena Was Done. If There's Another Gigantic Step Change Out There, We Don't Yet Know What It Is.

If You Decide That You're Going To Do Only The Things You Know Are Going To Work, You're Going To Leave A Lot Of Opportunity On The Table.

It's Perfectly Healthy-encouraged, Even- To Have An Idea Tomorrow That Contradicted Your Idea Today

The Framework I Found Which Made The Decision Incredibly Easy Was What I Called — Which Only A Nerd Would Call — A “regret Minimization Framework.” So, I Wanted To Project Myself Forward To Age 80 And Say, “okay, Now I’m Looking Back On My Life. I Want To Have Minimized The Number Of Regrets I Have.”

Entrepreneurs Must Be Willing To Be Misunderstood For Long Periods Of Time.

I'm Not Prepared To Make Any Multi-decade Commitments.

I'm Not Saying That Advertising Is Going Away. But The Balance Is Shifting. If Today The Successful Recipe Is To Put 70 Percent Of Your Energy Into Shouting About Your Service And 30 Percent Into Making It Great, Over The Next 20 Years I Think That's Going To Invert.

Our Biggest Cost Is Not Power, Or Servers, Or People. It's Lack Of Utilization. It Dominates All Other Costs.

Good Ideas Will Always Get Funded, So That's Not Going To Be A Problem. But You Will See That It Will Be Harder And Harder For Bad Ideas To Get Funded.

Amazon.com Strives To Be The E-commerce Destination Where Consumers Can Find And Discover Anything They Want To Buy Online.

There Are Multiple Ways To Be Externally Focused That Are Very Successful. You Can Be Customer-focused Or Competitor-focused. Some People Are Internally Focused, And If They Reach Critical Mass, They Can Tip The Whole Company.

If You Can't Feed A Team With Two Pizzas, It's Too Large.

The Smartest People Are Constantly Revising Their Understanding, Reconsidering A Problem They Thought They’d Already Solved. They’re Open To New Points Of View, New Information, New Ideas, Contradictions, And Challenges To Their Own Way Of Thinking.

You Can Work Long, Hard, Or Smart, But At Amazon.com You Can’t Choose Two Out Of Three.

People Who Are Right Most Of The Time Are People Who Change Their Minds Often

We're Working To Lower The Cost Of Spaceflight So That Many People Can Afford To Go And So That We Humans Can Better Continue Exploring The Solar System. Accomplishing This Mission Will Take Time, And We're Working On It Methodically.

It's Harder To Be Kind Than Clever

There Is No Map, And Charting A Path Ahead Will Not Be Easy. We Will Need To Invent, Which Means We Will Need To Experiment.

I Wouldn't Be Surprised If History Records Tim Berners-lee As The Second Gutenberg.

Your Brand Is Formed Primarily, Not By What Your Company Says About Itself, But What The Company Does.

Because, You Know, Resilience - If You Think Of It In Terms Of The Gold Rush, Then You'd Be Pretty Depressed Right Now Because The Last Nugget Of Gold Would Be Gone. But The Good Thing Is, With Innovation, There Isn't A Last Nugget. Every New Thing Creates Two New Questions And Two New Opportunities.

Effective Process Is Not Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy Is Senseless Process.

When You Are Eighty Years Old, And In A Quiet Moment Of Reflection Narrating For Only Yourself The Most Personal Version Of Your Life Story, The Telling That Will Be Most Compact And Meaningful Will Be The Series Of Choices You Have Made. In The End, We Are Our Choices.

The Net Is Pretty Cool, But The Physical World Is The Best Medium Ever.

Focusing On The Customer Makes A Company More Resilient.

I Feel Like In One Year It's Very Easy To Go From Internet Poster Boy To Internet Piсata.

If You Double The Number Of Experiments You Do Per Year You're Going To Double Your Inventiveness.

We Innovate By Starting With The Customer And Working Backwards. That Becomes The Touchstone For How We Invent.

Advertising Is The Price You Pay For Unremakable Thinking.

I Think Frugality Drives Innovation, Just Like Other Constraints Do. One Of The Only Ways To Get Out Of A Tight Box Is To Invent Your Way Out.

We Were Hoping To Build A Small Profitable Company; And Of Course, What We've Done Is Build A Large, Unprofitable Company.

I’d Rather Interview 50 People And Not Hire Anyone Than Hire The Wrong Person.

When You Receive Criticism From Well-meaning People, It Pays To Ask, ‘are They Right?’ And If They Are, You Need To Adapt What They’re Doing. If They’re Not Right, If You Really Have Conviction That They’re Not Right, You Need To Have That Long-term Willingness To Be Misunderstood. It’s A Key Part Of Invention.

I Like To Be Counted On.

I'm Skeptical That The Novel Will Be "reinvented." If You Start Thinking About A Medical Textbook Or Something, Then, Yes, I Think That's Ripe For Reinvention. You Can Imagine Animations Of A Beating Heart. But I Think The Novel Will Thrive In Its Current Form. That Doesn't Mean That There Won't Be New Narrative Inventions As Well. But I Don't Think They'll Displace The Novel.

People Forget Already How Much Utility They Get Out Of The Internet - How Much Utility They Get Out Of E-mail, How Much Utility They Get Out Of Even Simple Things Like Brochureware Online.

The Killer App That Got The World Ready For Appliances Was The Light Bulb. So The Light Bulb Is What Wired The World. And They Weren't Thinking About Appliances When They Wired The World. They Were Really Thinking About - They Weren't Putting Electricity Into The Home. They Were Putting Lighting Into The Home.

Cleverness Is A Gift, Kindness Is A Choice. Gifts Are Easy-they're Given After All. Choices Can Be Hard.

One Of The Things That I Hope Will Distinguish Amazon.com Is That We Continue To Be A Company That Defies Easy Analogy. This Requires A Lot Of Innovation, And Innovation Requires A Lot Of Random Walk.

My View Is There's No Bad Time To Innovate.

Go To Bed Early And Wake Up Early. The Morning Hours Are Good.

Word Of Mouth Is Very Powerful.

Our Garage Was Basically Science Fair Central.

But There's So Much Kludge, So Much Terrible Stuff, We Are At The 1908 Hurley Washing Machine Stage With The Internet. That's Where We Are. We Don't Get Our Hair Caught In It, But That's The Level Of Primitiveness Of Where We Are. We're In 1908.

I Think There Are Going To Be A Bunch Of Tablet-like Devices. It's Really A Different Product Category.

If You're Competitor-focused, You Have To Wait Until There Is A Competitor Doing Something. Being Customer-focused Allows You To Be More Pioneering.

Lowering Prices Is Easy. Being Able To Afford To Lower Prices Is Hard.

If You're Not Stubborn, You'll Give Up On Experiments Too Soon. And If You're Not Flexible, You'll Pound Your Head Against The Wall And You Won't See A Different Solution To A Problem You're Trying To Solve.

The Common Question That Gets Asked In Business Is, Why? That’s A Good Question, But An Equally Valid Question Is, Why Not?

What We Want To Be Is Something Completely New. There Is No Physical Analog For What Amazon.com Is Becoming.

I Knew That If I Failed I Wouldn't Regret That, But I Knew The One Thing I Might Regret Is Not Trying.

You Don't Choose Your Passions; Your Passions Choose You.

Young Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship

The Death Knell For Any Enterprise Is To Glorify The Past -- No Matter How Good It Was.

We Change Our Tools And Then Our Tools Change Us.

Many Of The Traits That Make Amazon Unusual Are Now Deeply Ingrained In The Culture. In Fact, If I Wanted To Change Them, I Couldn't. The Cultures Are Self-reinforcing, And That's A Good Thing.

Real Estate Is The Key Cost Of Physical Retailers. That's Why There's The Old Saw: Location, Location, Location.

Web 1.0 Was Making The Internet For People, Web 2.0 Is Making The Internet Better For Companies.

One Of The Huge Mistakes People Make Is That They Try To Force An Interest On Themselves. You Don't Choose Your Passions; Your Passions Choose You.

Young Entrepreneurs

My Grandfather Taught Me That It Is Harder To Be Kind Than It Is To Be Clever.

Do Something You're Very Passionate About, And Don't Try To Chase What Is Kind Of The "hot Passion" Of The Day.

Read The Declaration Of Independence To Your Children As A Tradition Every Fourth Of July. Make Sure They Understand Why The Word "pursuit" Precedes The Word "happiness."

Are You Lazy Or Just Incompetent?

It’s Very Important For Entrepreneurs To Be Realistic. So If You Believe On That First Day While You’re Writing The Business Plan That There’s A 70 Percent Chance That The Whole Thing Will Fail, Then That Kind Of Relieves The Pressure Of Self-doubt.

I Don't Think That You Can Invent On Behalf Of Customers Unless You're Willing To Think Long-term, Because A Lot Of Invention Doesn't Work. If You're Going To Invent, It Means You're Going To Experiment, And If You're Going To Experiment, You're Going To Fail, And If You're Going To Fail, You Have To Think Long Term.

For Many People, Extended Reading Sessions On An Lcd Display Cause Eyestrain.

I Never Worked On The School Newspaper.

It's Not An Experiment If You Know It's Going To Work.

Though We Are Optimistic, We Must Remain Vigilant And Maintain A Sense Of Urgency.

Sense Of Urgency

The People Who Are Right A Lot Often Change Their Minds.

I Think If People Read More, That Is A Better World.

If You Have A Business Model That Relies On Customers Being Misinformed, You Better Start Working On Changing Your Business Model.

I Don't Know About You, But Most Of My Exchanges With Cashiers Are Not That Meaningful.

Our Premise Is There Are Going To Be A Lot Of Winners. It's Not Winner Take All. Other People Do Not Have To Lose For Us To Win.

If You Never Want To Be Criticized, For Goodness Sake Don't Do Anything New.

We Can't Be In Survival Mode. We Have To Be In Growth Mode.

You Cannot Make A Business Case That You Should Be Who You Are Not

And I Still Buy Books At B&n, Borders And Elliot Bay ... I Probably Shouldn't Admit This. But I Don't Care. I Love Great Bookstores.

In The Old World, You Devoted 30% Of Your Time To Building A Great Service And 70% Of Your Time To Shouting About It. In The New World, That Inverts

If We Think Long Term, We Can Accomplish Things That We Couldn't Otherwise Accomplish.

Invention Is By Its Very Nature Disruptive. If You Want To Be Understood At All Times, Then Don't Do Anything New.

If Everything You Do Needs To Work On A Three-year Time Horizon, Then You’re Competing Against A Lot Of People, But If You’re Willing To Invest On A Seven-year Time Horizon, You’re Now Competing Against A Fraction Of Those People, Because Very Few Companies Are Willing To Do That. Just By Lengthening The Time Horizon, You Can Engage In Endeavours That You Could Never Otherwise Pursue. At Amazon We Like Things To Work In Five To Seven Years. We’re Willing To Plant Seeds, Let Them Grow—and We’re Very Stubborn. We Say We’re Stubborn On Vision And Flexible On Details.

I Believe You Have To Be Willing To Be Misunderstood If You're Going To Innovate.

I Don't Buy Stocks, I Make Stocks.

When [competitors Are] In The Shower In The Morning, They're Thinking About How They're Going To Get Ahead Of One Of Their Top Competitors. Here In The Shower, We're Thinking About How We Are Going To Invent Something On Behalf Of A Customer.

The Internet Is Disrupting Every Media Industry...people Can Complain About That, But Complaining Is Not A Strategy. And Amazon Is Not Happening To Book Selling, The Future Is Happening To Book Selling.

Part Of Company Culture Is Path-dependent. It’s The Lessons You Learn Along The Way.

There Are A Whole Bunch Of People Who Don't Like To Shop. But There Are Also People, Maybe, Who Even Do Like To Shop But Are Very Time Pressured. And So Shopping Online Can Save People Time.

Will You Be Clever At The Expense Of Others, Or Will You Be Kind?

In Seattle You Haven't Had Enough Coffee Until You Can Thread A Sewing Machine While It's Running.

Cultures Aren’t So Much Planned As They Evolve From That Early Set Of People.

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