Invent and Wander Quotes

“the quality of customer experience a partner delivers is the single most important criteria in our selection process—we simply won’t build a partnership with any company that does not share our passion for serving customers.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three.” Bezos makes no apologies. “We are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about,” he says. “Such things aren’t meant to be easy. We are incredibly fortunate to have this group of dedicated employees whose sacrifices and passion build Amazon.com”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“We believe that it’s technology married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“I have no special talent,” Einstein once said. “I am only passionately curious”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“It’s not easy to work here (when I interview people I tell them, “You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three”), but we are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Future generations will figure out the details.”
― Walter Isaacson, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“It's time to go back to the moon, this time to stay.”
― Walter Isaacson, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“You can invent your way to a better place.”
― Walter Isaacson, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Among Republicans, we trailed only the military and local police; among Democrats, we were at the top, leading every branch of government, universities, and the press.”
― Walter Isaacson, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Unlike many other countries around the world, this great nation we live in supports and does not stigmatize entrepreneurial risk-taking.”
― Walter Isaacson, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“What counts is being creative and imaginative.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“The potential size of a network of physical stores is exciting. However, we don’t know how to do it with low capital and high returns; physical-world retailing is a cagey and ancient business that’s already well served; and we don’t have any ideas for how to build a physical world store experience that’s meaningfully differentiated for customers.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“More than half of US households are members of Amazon Prime, and Amazon delivered ten billion packages in 2018, which is two billion more than the number of people on this planet.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“During our hiring meetings, we ask people to consider three questions before making a decision: Will you admire this person? If you think about the people you’ve admired in your life, they are probably people you’ve been able to learn from or take an example from. For myself, 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. Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering? We want to fight entropy. The bar has to continuously go up. I ask people to visualize the company five years from now. At that point, each of us should look around and say, “The standards are so high now—boy, I’m glad I got in when I did!” Along what dimension might this person be a superstar? Many people have unique skills, interests, and perspectives that enrich the work environment for all of us. It’s often something that’s not even related to their jobs.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of our competition, but of our customers.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life—the life you author from scratch on your own—begins. How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions? Will you follow dogma, or will you be original? Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure? Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions? Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize? Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love? Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling? When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless? Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Operational excellence: To us, operational excellence implies two things: delivering continuous improvement in customer experience and driving productivity, margin, efficiency, and asset velocity across all our businesses.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“This vision sounds very big, and it is. None of this is easy. All of it is hard, but I want to inspire you. So think about this: big things start small.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Bezos read dozens of science fiction novels each summer at a local library, and he now hosts an annual retreat for writers and moviemakers. Likewise, although his interest in robotics and artificial intelligence was sparked because of Amazon, these fields have grown to become intellectual passions, and he now hosts another gathering each year that brings together experts interested in machine learning, automation, robotics, and space.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“When his colleagues protested that one of Jobs’s ideas or proposals would be impossible to implement, he would use a trick he learned from a guru in India: he would stare at them without blinking and say, “Don’t be afraid. You can do it.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin wanted to know everything you could possibly know about everything that was knowable.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“work-life harmony.” I know if I am energized at work, happy at work, feeling like I’m adding value, part of a team, whatever energizes you, that makes me better at home. It makes me a better husband, a better father. Likewise, if I’m happy at home, it makes me a better employee, a better boss.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Still, with all of our faults and problems, the rest of the world would love even the tiniest sip of the elixir we have here in the US … It’s still Day One for this country.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“regret minimization framework.” He would imagine what he would feel when he turned eighty and thought back to the decision. “I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have,” he explains.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“You and I never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Smart people are a dime a dozen and often don’t amount to much. What counts is being creative and imaginative. That’s what makes someone a true innovator.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Long-term thinking levers our existing abilities and lets us do new things we couldn’t otherwise contemplate. It supports the failure and iteration required for invention, and it frees us to pioneer in unexplored spaces. Seek instant gratification—or the elusive promise of it—and chances are you’ll find a crowd there ahead of you.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Kindle makes it more convenient for readers to buy more books. Anytime you make something simpler and lower friction, you get more of it.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos