50 of The Best Jeff Bezos Quotes on Innovation, Business, and Customer Care

Jeff Preston Bezos is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon. Born on January 12, 1964, Jeff Bezos is also an American technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. Bezos founded Amazon in late 1994 on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Seattle. Amazon began as an online bookstore and has now expanded to selling multiple varieties of products and services, like video and audio streaming, cloud infrastructure services, office products, etc. Today, Amazon sells over 480 million products in the USA.  

Jeff Bezos overtook Bill Gates to become the richest person in the World in July 2017, following an increase in Amazon’s stock. He was designated the “wealthiest person in modern history” after his net worth increased to $150 billion. Bezos is still the richest person in the world to date with an estimated net worth of 162 billion USD. He is also the first centi-billionaire on the Forbes wealth index. 

Like Jeff Bezos says, stress comes from ignoring things you shouldn't be ignoring. Success quotes from the world's most successful entrepreneur should not be ignored. They are categorized into, quotes on innovation, quotes on business strategy and quotes on customer centricity.

Quotes on Innovation

1. “If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.” ~Jeff Bezos

2. “Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood. You do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, but for a long period of time, well-meaning people may criticize that effort.

3. “In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.” ~Jeff Bezos

4. “My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.” ~Jeff Bezos

5. “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.” ~Jeff Bezos

6. “We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.” ~Jeff Bezos

7. “I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.” ~Jeff Bezos

8. “A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.” ~Jeff Bezos

9. “There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.” ~Jeff Bezos

10. “It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.” ~Jeff Bezos

11. “It’s hard to find things that won’t sell online.” ~Jeff Bezos

12. “Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.” ~Jeff Bezos

13. “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.” ~Jeff Bezos

14. “If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.” ~Jeff Bezos

15. “If you can’t tolerate critics, don’t do anything new or interesting.” ~Jeff Bezos

16. “Invention by its very nature is disruptive.” ~Jeff Bezos

17. “We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.” ~Jeff Bezos

18. “What’s dangerous is not to evolve.” ~Jeff Bezos

19. “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.” ~Jeff Bezos

Quotes on Business Strategy

20. “We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn’t be in this business.” ~Jeff Bezos

21. “Your margin is my opportunity.” ~Jeff Bezos

22. “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.” ~Jeff Bezos

23. “Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.” ~Jeff Bezos

24. “My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.” ~Jeff Bezos

25. “If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.” ~Jeff Bezos

26. “Position yourself with something that captures your curiosity, something that you’re missionary about.” ~Jeff Bezos

27. “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” ~Jeff Bezos

28. “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” ~Jeff Bezos

29. “The common question that gets asked in business is, why? That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, why not?” ~Jeff Bezos

30. “You want to look at what other companies are doing. It’s very important not to be hermetically sealed. But you don’t want to look at it as if, ‘OK, we’re going to copy that.’ You want to look at it and say, ‘That’s very interesting. What can we be inspired to do as a result of that?’ And then put your own unique twist on it.” ~Jeff Bezos

31. “Percentage margins don’t matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.” ~Jeff Bezos

32. When you receive criticism from well-meaning people, it pays to ask, ‘Are they right?’ And if they are, you need to adapt what they’re doing.

33. “In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.” ~Jeff Bezos

34. “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.” ~Jeff Bezos

35. “Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.” ~Jeff Bezos

36. “What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.” ~Jeff Bezos

37. “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details” ~Jeff Bezos

38. “The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy.” ~Jeff Bezos

39. “Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.” ~Jeff Bezos

40. “Work hard, have fun, and make history.” ~Jeff Bezos

Quotes on Customer Centricity and Care

41. “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.” ~Jeff Bezos

42. “Obsess about customers, not competitors.” ~Jeff Bezos

43. “The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.” ~Jeff Bezos

44. “The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.” ~Jeff Bezos

45. “You want your customers to value your service.” ~Jeff Bezos

46. “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” ~Jeff Bezos

47. “Our point of view is we will sell more if we help people make purchasing decisions.” ~Jeff Bezos

48. “What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don’t actually improve their lives. ~Jeff Bezos

49. “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. ~Jeff Bezos

50. “If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.” ~Jeff Bezos