Quotes By Jeff Bezos

I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.

The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.

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

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

I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category.

I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people's progress.

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.

We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.

One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.

A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last.

What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.

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.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.

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

Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.

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

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about - they weren't putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

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

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

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.

I don't want to use my creative energy on somebody else's user interface.

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

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.

You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.

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

Infrastructure web services had to happen.