Jeff Bezos on Wealth Quotes

"Your margin is my opportunity."

"What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you, you have to lean into that and figure out what to do."

"If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people."

"Maintain a long-term focus."

"If you're going to do anything novel, you have to be willing to fail."

"The only way to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

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

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

"If you can't tolerate critics, don't do anything new or interesting."

"I don't think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you're willing to fail, and I think we're very comfortable with that."

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

"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 to a problem you're trying to solve."

"Inventing and pioneering involves a willingness to be misunderstood for long periods of time."

"Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it's going to work, it's not an experiment."

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

"Work hard, have fun, make history."

"Missionaries build better products."

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

"Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1."

"Market share is a very poor proxy for profitability."

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

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

"In the long run, your interests and the customers' interests align."

"We continue to measure ourselves by the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth."

"Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business."

"We can’t be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode."

"I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying."

"Big things start small."

"We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time."

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

"You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate."

"We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is the long-term goal."

"Start with the customer and work backward."