“A bigger business is like a cruise ship: There are lots of amenities and you can go a lot further, but it’s harder to turn quickly.”

We decided that if we get the culture right, most of the stuff, like building a brand around delivering the very best customer service, will just take care of itself.

Whatever you are thinking, think bigger.

Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.

The ultimate definition of success is: you could lose everything that you have and truly be okay with it. Your happiness isn’t based on external factors.

If you’re focused on the friendship as its own reward, serendipitous stuff just happens. I know that sounds weird, but I can tell you for our 12 years of existence, it’s actually how a lot of stuff happens.

Our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff, like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand or empowering passionate employees and customers, will happen on its own.

Good businesses generate missions to drive their profits. Great businesses generate profits to drive their missions.

Our customers call and e-mail us to say that’s how it feels when a Zappos box arrives. And that’s how we view this company.

Open, honest communication is the best foundation for any relationship, but remember that at the end of the day it’s not what you say or what you do, but how you make people feel that matters the most.

I believe that there’s something interesting about anyone and everyone – you just have to figure out what that something is.

Hopefully 10 years from now people won’t even realize we started out selling shoes. They will just think about Zappos as a place to get the best customer service.

Never accept or be too comfortable with the status quo, because the companies that get into trouble are historically the ones that aren’t able to adapt to change and respond quickly enough.

To never forget that the most important thing in life is the quality of life we lead.

Success is getting to a point where you’d be truly OK with losing everything you have and starting over.

Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships), and vision/meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself).

I thought about how easily we are all brainwashed by our society and culture to stop thinking and just assume by default that more money equals more success and more happiness, when ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life.

The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.

The kingdom of God is a crash-bang opera: the king is dramatic, demanding, and unavoidable.

Hey, I think it’s easy for guys to hit .300 and stay in the big leagues. Hit .200 and try to stick around as long as I did; I think it’s a much greater accomplishment. That’s hard.

I had only that one picture, Hitler, the Beast of Berlin, in which I had a part big enough to impress anyone.

When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for?

You think a lot of people get to be big stars and get a little crazy.