Quotes from Jeff Bezos

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.

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.

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

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

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

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it's government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author's world.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we'd have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we'll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

The special ops guys and the firefighters around the world have this great phrase. They say, 'Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,' and that is true. Everything I've accomplished in my life has been because of that attitude.

What characteristics do I look for when hiring somebody? That's one of the questions I ask when interviewing. I want to know what kind of people they would hire.

People don't want gadgets, they want services.

I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.

Feel free to cover Amazon any way you want. Feel free to cover Jeff Bezos any way you want.

Beautiful speech doesn't need protection, it's ugly speech that needs protection. We have these cultural norms that allow people to say really ugly things. You don't have to invite them to your dinner party, but you should let them say it.

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.

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.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.

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

Our motto at Blue Origin is 'Gradatim Ferociter': 'Step by Step, Ferociously.'

Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.

We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with the customer and we work backwards.

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.

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.