Strip malls are history.
People loved their horses, too. But you don’t keep riding your horse to work just because you love it.
People don’t want gadgets, they want services.
Read the Declaration of Independence to your children as a tradition every Fourth of July. Make sure they understand why the word “pursuit” precedes the word “happiness.”
Web 1.0 was making the Internet for people, Web 2.0 is making the Internet better for companies.
I told all of our original investors that they would lose their money for sure.
Be proud of your choices, not your gifts.
You cannot make a business case that you should be who you are not.
Many of the traits that make Amazon unusual are now deeply ingrained in the culture. In fact, if I wanted to change them, I couldn’t. The cultures are self-reinforcing, and that’s a good thing.
Do something you’re very passionate about, and don’t try to chase what is kind of the “hot passion” of the day.
Obsess over customers.
My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.
But there’s still so much you can do with technology to improve the customer experience. And that’s the sense in which I believe it’s still Day One, and that it’s early in the day. If anything, the rate of change is accelerating.
We’ve got thousands of investors counting on us. And we’re a team of thousands of employees all counting on each other. That’s fun.
There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.
I don’t buy stocks, I make stocks.
Though we are optimistic, we must remain vigilant and maintain a sense of urgency.
Our garage was basically science fair central.
You have to use your judgment. In cases like that, we say, ’let’s be simple minded. We know this is a feature that’s good for customers. Let’s do it.
The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.