“If you’re truly obsessed over customers, it’ll cover a lot of errors.”

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.

Your brand is formed primarily, not by what your company says about itself, but what the company does.

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

If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn’t otherwise accomplish.

Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.

No business can continue to shrink. That can only go on for so long before irrelevancy sets in.

E-mail has some magical ability to turn off the politeness gene in a human being.

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.

We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

If you have a business model that relies on customers being misinformed, you better start working on changing your business model.

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

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.

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.

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.

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

It’s hard to find things that won’t sell online.

You can make money doing evil.

A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it.

Adopt and change before any major trends or changes.

I do think there is an important artistic component in what we do. As a technology company I’ve tried to really stress that.

An annuity is a very serious business.

You’re probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm.

You can’t run a business without taking risks. The brave may not live forever – but the cautious do not live at all!

Experience is the thing of supreme value.