Jeff Bezos Quotes

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

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

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

What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.

One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you.

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

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.

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.

Everything you are comes from your choices.

We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and thy're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.

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.

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.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room

I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

Obsess about customers, not competitors.

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

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

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.

If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.

Things never go smoothly.

The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.

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.

If you think about the long term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.

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.

If you are going to do large-scale invention, you have to be willing to do three things: You must be willing to fail; you have to be willing to think long term; and you have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy - they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

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.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.

Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.

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

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

We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.

All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's.

What's dangerous is not to evolve.

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

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

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.

Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.

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

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

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

Our premise is there are going to be a lot of winners. It's not winner take all. Other people do not have to lose for us to win.

Though we are optimistic, we must remain vigilant and maintain a sense of urgency.

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