Jeff Bezos Quotes

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.

Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

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.

Am I going to regret leaving Wall Street? No. Will I regret missing the beginning of the Internet? Yes.

I went to Princeton specifically to study physics.

If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.

Our biggest cost is not power, or servers, or people. It's lack of utilization. It dominates all other costs.

Invention is by its very nature disruptive. If you want to be understood at all times, then don't do anything new.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.

The three most important things in retail are location, location, location. The three most important things for our consumer business are technology, technology, technology.

People don't want gadgets, they want services.

If we can keep our competitors focused on us while we stay focused on the customer, ultimately we'll turn out all right.

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.

I'm not prepared to make any multi-decade commitments.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.

People who are right most of the time are people who change their minds often

People who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds.

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.

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.

We like to pioneer, we like to explore, we like to go down dark alleys and see what's on the other side.

If you don't understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness.

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 cannot make a business case that you should be who you are not

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.

I'm going to go do this crazy thing. I'm going to start this company selling books online.

Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.

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

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.

One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.

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.

The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy.

You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.

If you have a business model that relies on customers being misinformed, you better start working on changing your business model.

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.

Go to bed early and wake up early. The morning hours are good.

Your margin is my opportunity.

Ebooks had to happen.

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."

Above all else, align with customers. Win when they win. Win only when they win.

It's hard to find things that won't sell online.

A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last.

Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.

We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.

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!

I love my life. I love being an inventor.

The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which.

Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.