Jeff Bezos

“I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'OK, I'm looking back on my life. I want to minimize the number of regrets I have.'”

“Any business plan won't survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan.”

“We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.”

“If you never want to be criticized, for goodness' sake don't do anything new.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's.”

“Your margin is my opportunity.”

“I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it's not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.”

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

“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.”

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

“We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business.”

“I've always been at the intersection of computers and whatever they can revolutionize.”

“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.”

“Strip malls are history.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.”

“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.”