Jeff Bezos Quotes

Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.

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

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

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.

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

I’m not selling you a product; I’m selling you a relationship.

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

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

In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

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.

Your margin is my opportunity.

The best way to complain is to make things.

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.

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

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

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it. …making mistakes and inventing on behalf of customers.

To operate a business is not to give charity; it’s to make a profit.

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 tailwind is now a headwind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.

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

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

No business plan survives first contact with customers.

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

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

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.

The vision is always ahead of the execution.

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

Work hard, have fun, make history.

The key thing about a book, which is different from an URL, is that you have to open it and turn the pages one at a time.

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

Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week.

If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.

The best leaders are humble listeners, leaders who collaborate.

Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.

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

One advantage of a corporation is that it can organise its affairs to take advantage of tax laws.

The other rule is that I want both sides of any negotiation to come out with smiles.

One of the great through lines of our business is the degree to which our pricing embraces selection.

When the world changes around you and when it changes against you, what used to be a tailwind is now a headwind.

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

Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.

Work-life harmony is a concept that I prefer to work-life balance. It’s not that I’m against balance, but I think that there are parts of our lives, and this is true for both men and women, there are parts of our lives that are going to be out of balance.

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

The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy.

The combination of hard work and smart work is efficient work.

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.

We have a culture of self-reliance. We don’t believe in the government, so we don’t want the government making decisions for us.

People who are right most of the time are people who change their minds often.

What we need is for the Internet to create the next appeal – for a world of higher bandwidths and lower latency.