Lots of companies don't succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.

Those quarterly results were fully baked three years ago. So today I'm working on a quarter that will happen in 2020, not next quarter. Next quarter is done already and it's probably been done for a couple years.

Friends congratulate me after a quarterly-earnings announcement and say, 'Good job, great quarter '... And I'll say, 'Thank you, but that quarter was baked three years ago. I'm working on a quarter that'll happen in 2021 right now.'

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

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.