Quotes from Jeff Bezos

Long-term thinking is both a requirement and an outcome of true ownership.

Owners are different from tenants.

Though negative reviews cost us some sales in the short term, helping customers make better purchase decisions ultimately pays off for the company.

Our pricing strategy does not attempt to maximize margin *percentages*, but instead seeks to drive maximum value for customers and thereby create a much larger bottom line—in the long term.

In short, what's good for customers is good for shareholders.

People see that we're determined to offer both world-leading customer experience and the lowest possible prices, but to some this dual goal seems paradoxical if not downright quixotic.

We transform much of customer experience—such as unmatched selection, extensive product information, personalized recommendations, and other new software features—into largely a fixed expense.

Amazon.com continues to show remarkably high levels of customer satisfaction. With a score of 88 (up 5%), it is generating satisfaction at a level unheard of in the service industry... Can customer satisfaction for Amazon climb more? The latest ACSI data suggest that it is indeed possible. Both service and the value proposition offered by Amazon have increased at a steep rate.

Our pricing objective is not to discount a small number of products for a limited period of time, but to offer low prices everyday and apply them broadly across our entire product range.

Free cash flow—our most important financial measure—reached $135 million, a $305 million improvement over the prior year.

Given how much we've grown and how much the Internet has evolved, it's notable that the fundamentals of how we do business remain the same.

Focus on cost improvement makes it possible for us to afford to lower prices, which drives growth. Growth spreads fixed costs across more sales, reducing cost per unit, which makes possible more price reductions. Customers like this, and it's good for shareholders. Please expect us to repeat this loop.

When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take the cash flows.

Why focus on cash flows? Because a share of stock is a share of a company's future cash flows, and, as a result, cash flows more than any other single variable seem to do the best job of explaining a company's stock price over the long term.

Our consumer franchise is our most valuable asset, and we will nourish it with innovation and hard work.

There is more innovation ahead of us than behind us, we are close to demonstrating the operating leverage of our business model, and I get to work with this amazing team of Amazonians all over the world.

the long-term interests of shareholders are tightly linked to the interests of our customers: if we do our jobs right, today's customers will buy more tomorrow, we'll add more customers in the process, and it will all add up to more cash flow and more long-term value for our shareholders.

We're a company that wants to be weighed, and over time, we will be—over the long term, all companies are.

In the physical world, retailers will continue to use technology to reduce costs, but not to transform the customer experience.

Amazon.com today is a unique asset. We have the brand, the customer relationships, the technology, the fulfillment infrastructure, the financial strength, the people, and the determination to extend our leadership in this infant industry and to build an important and lasting company.

the current online shopping experience is the worst it will ever be.

We have a market-size unconstrained opportunity in an area where the underlying foundational technology we employ improves every day. That is not normal.

this remains Day 1 for e-commerce, and these are the early days of category formation where many customers are forming relationships for the first time.

Our vision is to use this platform to build Earth's most customer-centric company, a place where customers can come to find and discover anything and everything they might want to buy online.

no other company has ever grown 90 percent in three months on a sales base of over $1 billion.

the quality of customer experience a partner delivers is the single most important criteria in our selection process – we simply won't build a partnership with any company that does not share our passion for serving customers.

I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of our competition, but of our customers.

It is truly Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute our business plan well, it remains Day 1 for Amazon.com.

Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com's success.

We hold as axiomatic that customers are perceptive and smart, and that brand image follows reality and not the other way around.