Jeff Bezos Quotes

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.

Strip malls are history.

Things never go smoothly.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

If you're not doing something that people will remark on, then it's going to be hard to generate word of mouth.

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.

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.

The common question that gets asked in business is, why? That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, why not?

Do something you're very passionate about, and don't try to chase what is kind of the "hot passion" of the day.

No, communication is terrible!

Be proud of your choices, not your gifts.

I wouldn't be surprised if history records Tim Berners-Lee as the second Gutenberg.

Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.

If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.

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.

In the end, we are our choices.

You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.

I like to be counted on.

E-mail has some magical ability to turn off the politeness gene in a human being.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy-they're given after all. Choices can be hard.

To get something new done you have to be stubborn and focused, to the point that others might find unreasonable.

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.

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.

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

I don't know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.

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.

If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large.

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.

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.

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

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.

The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth's most customer-centric company.

Where you are going to spend your time and your energy is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life.

I told all of our original investors that they would lose their money for sure.

The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works.

I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.

What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.

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.

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.

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.

You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you.

In Seattle you haven't had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it's running.

Any business plan won't survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan.