Quotes from Jeff Bezos

I don't know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.

Part of company culture is path-dependent - it's the lessons you learn along the way.

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.

People will visit Mars, they will settle mars, and we should because it's cool.

We need to know what the resources of the moon are. We have great evidence now because of different kinds of radar and spectroscopic analysis that people have been able to do. But we really do need to go visit there, and we can do that with a robot craft without any problem.

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.

What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.

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

But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.

I told all of our original investors that they would lose their money for sure.

Go to bed early and wake up early. The morning hours are good.

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

Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.

The death knell for any enterprise is to glorify the past -- no matter how good it was.

Read the Declaration of Independence to your children as a tradition every Fourth of July. Make sure they understand why the word "pursuit" precedes the word "happiness."

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.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

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.

I think that, ah, I'm a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

We will have to leave this planet, and we're going to leave it, and it's going to make this planet better.

One thing that I find very unmotivating is the kind of Plan B argument: when Earth gets destroyed, you want to be somewhere else. That doesn't work for me. We have sent robotic probes now to every place in the solar system, and this is the best one.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy-they're given after all. Choices can be hard.