Jeff Bezos > Quotes

“I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”
― Jeff Bezos

“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.”
― Jeff Bezos

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

“E-mail has some magical ability to turn off the politeness gene in a human being.”
― Jeff Bezos

“People who are right most of the time are people who change their minds often.”
― Jeff Bezos

“We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details….”
― Jeff Bezos

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

“I wanted a woman who could get me out of a Third World prison. Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.”
― Jeff Bezos

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”
― Jeff Bezos

“We can't be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode.”
― Jeff Bezos

“Work Hard, have fun, make history”
― Jeff Bezos

“The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy.”
― Jeff Bezos

“If you never want to be criticized, for goodness' sake don't do anything new.”
― Jeff Bezos

“Your margin is my opportunity”
― Jeff Bezos

“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.”
― Jeff Bezos

“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.”
― Jeff Bezos

“The death knell for any enterprise is to glorify the past -- no matter how good it was.”
― Jeff Bezos

“It's not an experiment if you know it's going to work.”
― Jeff Bezos

“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.”
― Jeff Bezos

“Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.”
― Jeff Bezos

“People who love all fields of knowledge are the ones who can best spot the patterns that exist across nature.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“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.”
― Jeff Bezos

“Start With the Customer and Work Backward”
― Jeff Bezos

“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.”
― Jeff Bezos

“Most big technology companies are competitor focused. They see what others are doing, and then work to fast follow. In contrast, 90 to 95 percent of what we build in AWS is driven by what customers tell us they want.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Cultures aren’t so much planned as they evolve from that early set of people.”
― Jeff Bezos

“We humans coevolve with our tools. We change our tools, and then our tools change us.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
― Jeff Bezos

“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… Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue”
― Jeff Bezos

“No business can continue to shrink. That can only go on for so long before irrelevancy sets in.”
― Jeff Bezos