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

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

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

We can't be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode.

What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.

One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don't choose your passions; your passions choose you.

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

It's hard to find things that won't sell online.

Everything you are comes from your choices.

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

We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and thy're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

Why do we need money beyond a point? If we are free of ill health, enmity, and debt, is that not enough? Too much money only leads to less peace.

In the old days, it had been talent and style and brilliance and now it was more and more productivity.

Dinner a time when . . . one should eat wisely but not too well and talk well but not too wisely.

The most conservative man in this world is the British trade unionist when you want to change him.

What's important to me is that there's a necessary alienation between me and the subject. I don't want to know them well. I don't want to have any intimate contact with them.

Be good. This will make your angel happy. When sorrows and misfortunes, physical or spiritual, afflict you, turn to your guardian angel with strong trust and he will help you.

[The Psalms are] a Little Bible, wherein everything contained in the entire Bible is beautifully and briefly comprehended.

Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the center of the city.

The grave is Heaven's golden gate, And rich and poor around it wait; O Shepherdess of England's fold, Behold this gate of pearl and gold!

We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.