42 Quotes & Sayings By 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

Position yourself with something that captures your curiosity, something that you're missionary about. Jeff Bezos

The missionary is building the product and building the service because they love the customer, because they love the product, because they love the service. The mercenary is building the product or service so that they can flip the company and make money. 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

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

What’s dangerous is not to evolve. Jeff Bezos

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

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

We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. Jeff Bezos

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

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

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

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

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

The Post is famous for its investigative journalism. It pours energy and investment and sweat and dollars into uncovering important stories. And then a bunch of websites summarize that [work] in about four minutes and readers can access that news for free. One question is, how do you make a living in that kind of environment? If you can't, it's difficult to put the right resources behind it.. Even behind a paywall, websites can summarize your work and make it available for free. From a reader point of view, the reader has to ask, 'Why should I pay you for all that journalistic effort when I can get it for free from another site?' . Jeff Bezos

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

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

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. Jeff Bezos

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

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. Jeff Bezos

There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second. Jeff Bezos

People will visit Mars, they will settle mars, and we should because it's cool. Jeff Bezos

Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners. Jeff Bezos

I have won this lottery. It's a gigantic lottery, and it's called Amazon.com. And I'm using my lottery winnings to push us a little further into space. Jeff Bezos

I've always been at the intersection of computers and whatever they can revolutionize. Jeff Bezos

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

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. Jeff Bezos

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine. Jeff Bezos

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

Strip malls are history. 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

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. Jeff Bezos

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

I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category. Jeff Bezos

Humans are unbelievably data efficient. You don't have to drive 1 million miles to drive a car, but the way we teach a self-driving car is have it drive a million miles. Jeff Bezos

What's dangerous is not to evolve. Jeff Bezos

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. Jeff Bezos

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. Jeff Bezos

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. Jeff Bezos