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.

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.

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

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.

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that.

Word of mouth is very powerful.

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.

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

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.

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 human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

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

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.

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.

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.

What's dangerous is not to evolve.

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.

Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When [competitors are] in the shower in the morning, they're thinking about how they're going to get ahead of one of their top competitors. Here in the shower, we're thinking about how we are going to invent something on behalf of a customer.

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

Go to bed early and wake up early. The morning hours are good.

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

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

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

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional.

Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness.

Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That's why there's the old saw: location, location, location.

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

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

You know, if you make a customer unhappy they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends. So, we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us.

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

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

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.