“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.”

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.

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.

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

Complaining is not a strategy.You have to work with the world as you find it, not as you would have it be.

I’m going to go do this crazy thing. I’m going to start this company selling books online.

I think if people read more, that is a better world.

Do something you’re very passionate about, and don’t try to chase what is kind of the “hot passion” of the day.

I am fiscally prudent and socially progressive. I believe in protecting a woman’s right to choose. I believe in marriage equality.

Do you know what it feels like to be wounded and told that you caused the wound to yourself by choosing to be where the harm landed?

Life is not fair, but we can choose to be fair humans even if life or other humans choose to be unfair to us.

If you ever get the chance to treat them the way they treated you, I hope you choose to walk away and do better.

When you know what are you are doing and have a clear vision of where you are going, you will not need to chase opportunities. Opportunities will seek you. Happiness will chase you. And, instead of being a choice, you will be the one choosing.

If you ever get the chance to treat them the way they treated you, I hope you choose to walk away and do better.

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

So what do we say to each other is the language of unspoken? The words are sweet; the space is bitter or is this just the them I’ve chosen.