Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

by Jeff Bezos

first is to be curious, passionately curious.

second key trait is to love and to connect the arts and sciences.

Another characteristic of truly innovative and creative people is that they have a reality-distortion field,

One final trait shared by all my subjects is that they retained a childlike sense of wonder.

“You and I never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”

I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day.”

“You know the business plan won’t survive its first encounters with reality,” he says. “But the discipline of writing the plan forces you to think through some of the issues and to get sort of mentally comfortable in the space. Then you start to understand, if you push on this knob, this will move over here and so on. So, that’s the first step.”

Is that person a missionary or a mercenary?”

“You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three”),

I’ve always tried hard to work only with people I admire, and I encourage folks here to be just as demanding. Life is definitely too short to do otherwise.

“It’s All About the Long Term.”