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

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it's not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

We believe that over time this could turn into a significant business for Amazon, significant revenue stream for publishers and authors and a helpful customer service for readers,

We believe there's a tremendous opportunity ahead across the $5 trillion retail market globally.

We'd like to thank Joe for his hard work and accomplishments over the last year. I believe he is making the right decision for him and his family under the circumstances. We all wish him the very best.

We're trying to build the most customer-centric company in the world, ... I genuinely believe the balance of power online shifts away from the merchant toward the consumer.

As the era of Internet sector investing comes to a close, it appears that investors are becoming more discerning about companies on an individual level, something we believe will result in a positive impact on the competitive landscape,

Competition will accelerate in 1999. We still believe it is impossible to keep the pronounced bookselling market share lead over the long term.

Competition will accelerate in 1999, ... We still believe it is impossible to keep the pronounced bookselling market share lead over the long term.

I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.

I now believe it's possible that the current rules governing business-method and software patents could end up harming us all, ... despite the call from many thoughtful folks for us to give up our patents unilaterally, I don't believe it would be right for us to do so.

We've done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don't do that, because we believe -- and we have to take this as an article of faith -- that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term.

I definitely believe people should pay for copyrighted works. And the laws are sufficient: They already require you to pay for copyright work. There's no confusion. The problem is...it's a heck of a lot easier to steal MP3s than to buy them.

A lot of people – and I’m just not one of them – believe that you should live for the now. I think what you do is think about the great expanse of time ahead of you and try to make sure that you’re planning for that in a way that’s going to leave you ultimately satisfied. This is the way it works for me.

It’s very important for entrepreneurs to be realistic. So if you believe on that first day while you’re writing the business plan that there’s a 70 percent chance that the whole thing will fail, then that kind of relieves the pressure of self-doubt.

But there's still so much you can do with technology to improve the customer experience. And that's the sense in which I believe it's still Day One, and that it's early in the day. If anything, the rate of change is accelerating.

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?'

Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.

There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.

The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.

We believe that over time this could turn into a significant business for Amazon, significant revenue stream for publishers and authors and a helpful customer service for readers,

We get to move more units across that same fixed-cost structure. So it does help our business and help customers at the same time,

If you have a business model that relies on customers being misinformed, you better start working on changing your business model.

Our premise is there are going to be a lot of winners. It's not winner take all. Other people do not have to lose for us to win.

I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert.

I think one of the things people don't understand is we can build more shareholder value by lowering product prices than we can by trying to raise margins. It's a more patient approach, but we think it leads to a stronger, healthier company. It also serves customers much, much better.

We watch our competitors, learn from them, see the things that they were doing for customers and copy those things as much as we can.

Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room

If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large.

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

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.

I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about - they weren't putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.

I think that, ah, I'm a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

I don't think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you're willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn't work. If you're going to invent, it means you're going to experiment, and if you're going to experiment, you're going to fail, and if you're going to fail, you have to think long term.

It's part of the territory with Internet stocks, that kind of volatility. It can be up 30 percent one month, it can be down 30 percent in a month, and a minute spent thinking about the short-term stock price is a minute wasted.

I'm skeptical that the novel will be "re­invented." If you start thinking about a medical textbook or something, then, yes, I think that's ripe for reinvention. You can imagine animations of a beating heart. But I think the novel will thrive in its current form. That doesn't mean that there won't be new narrative inventions as well. But I don't think they'll displace the novel.

The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

I think one of the things people don't understand is we can build more shareholder value by lowering product prices than we can by trying to raise margins. It's a more patient approach, but we think it leads to a stronger, healthier company. It also serves customers much, much better.

I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert.

I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category.

If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn't otherwise accomplish.

A lot of people – and I’m just not one of them – believe that you should live for the now. I think what you do is think about the great expanse of time ahead of you and try to make sure that you’re planning for that in a way that’s going to leave you ultimately satisfied. This is the way it works for me.

I think if people read more, that is a better world.

I think technology advanced faster than anticipated. In that whirlwind, a lot of companies didn't survive. The reason we have done well is because, even in that whirlwind, we kept heads-down focused on the customers. All the metrics that we can track about customers have improved every year.

Advertising is the price you pay for unremakable thinking.