“If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.”

We can’t be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode.

Our biggest cost is not power, or servers, or people. It’s lack of utilization. It dominates all other costs.

To get something new done you have to be stubborn and focused, to the point that others might find unreasonable.

Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.

We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and thy’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

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.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.

Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.

It’s harder to be kind than clever.

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.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

We’re all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.

Dream the biggest dream for yourself. Hold the highest vision of life for yourself.

A bad beginning makes a bad ending.

No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own business.

We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision.

You must be prepared to work always without applause.