Jeff Bezos on Excellence Quotes

"You can have high standards in one area and low standards in another."

"We prioritize long-term growth over short-term profitability."

"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."

"Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room."

"Excellence is not a destination; it's a continuous journey of improvement."

"Thinking big is a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"The best way to fail is to have a low standard for your own work."

"If you're going to invent, it means you're going to fail, because you're going to try a bunch of things that don't work."

"You must have a realistic expectation for how hard it should be to achieve a high standard."

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

"Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood."

"Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do."

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

"To achieve high standards, you must first recognize what 'good' looks like in that specific domain."

"Building a culture of high standards is well worth the effort, and there are many benefits."

"High standards are contagious. If you put a new person into a high standards team, they will adapt."

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

"You cannot have high standards without a deep love for the work you are doing."

"We don't do PowerPoint at Amazon. We write six-page narratives. It's a higher standard of communication."

"Maintain a Day 1 mentality. Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline."

"If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness."

"Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen."

"One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

"Hire and develop the best. Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion."

"In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story."

"Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study."

"If you want to be successful in the long-term, you have to have high standards for yourself and your team."

"A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well."

"If you think a high standard can be achieved in two weeks, and it actually takes six months, you will fail."

"Excellence requires a combination of recognition and scope."

"We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details."

"The most important thing is to be customer obsessed. Don't be competitor obsessed, be customer obsessed."

"High standards are not innate. You have to teach high standards."