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

One of the things that I hope will distinguish Amazon.com is that we continue to be a company that defies easy analogy. This requires a lot of innovation, and innovation requires a lot of random walk.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all but goes on making his own business better all the time.

Time after time, history ran over the luddites and romanticists, those who sought to restore the old and delay the new. And every time, history did it with faster, more reliable and more advanced vehicles.

You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense.