We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines ... Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business.

... if it's not your style to stretch and go the extra mile to make sure our customer experience is great, you're going to have an allergic reaction to this company. You probably won't stay. If you do try and stay, but can't adapt to the culture then it will reject you like a virus from a healthy immune system.

The death knell for any enterprise is to glorify the past -- no matter how good it was.

In the end, we are our choices.

Your margin is my opportunity.

We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.

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.