I told all of our original investors that they would lose their money for sure.
In business, what’s dangerous is not to evolve.
I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.
I like treating things as if they’re small, you know Amazon even though it is a large company, I want it to have the heart and spirit of a small one.
Companies are rarely criticized for the things that they failed to try. But they are, many times, criticized for things they tried and failed at.
In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Everything you are comes from your choices.
You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three.
We can't be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode.
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.
Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.
If you never want to be criticized, for goodness sake don't do anything new.
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.
Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.
Work hard, have fun and make history.
If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company.
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.
We also have no incentive compensation of any kind. And the reason we don’t is because it is detrimental to teamwork.
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.