Jeff Bezos Quotes

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

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.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

Part of company culture is path-dependent – it’s the lessons you learn along the way.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

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

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

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

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

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

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

Your margin is my opportunity.

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.

Work Hard, have fun, make history.

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

If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.

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

Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.

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

No business can continue to shrink. That can only go on for so long before irrelevancy sets in.

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

Position yourself with something that captures your curiosity, something that you’re missionary about.

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