We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Jeff BezosRead
When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our lives are defined by the choices we make over time.
This quote emphasizes the significance of the choices we make throughout our lives, suggesting that when we reflect on our past, the essence of our existence will be captured in those choices. Jeff Bezos highlights that our identities and life stories are shaped not by external circumstances, but by the decisions we consciously choose to take.
Themes
ChoicesLifeReflectionMeaningIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
During a graduation speech to inspire students to consider their future choices.
More from Jeff Bezos
All quotes →Work hard, have fun and make history.
Jeff BezosRead
If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.
Jeff BezosRead
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
Jeff BezosRead
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.
Jeff BezosRead
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.
Jeff BezosRead
Similar quotes
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?
Gertrude SteinRead
Choice is the engine of our evolution ... if you choose unconsciously, you will evolve unconsciously. If you choose consciously, you will evolve consciously
Gary ZukavRead
...'I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.' 'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,'said Lu Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him.
Terry PratchettRead
The individual always realizes only one of the possibilities in his development, which could always have taken a different turning whenever he had to make an important decision.
Wilhelm DiltheyRead
Everything lives and lasts by the inner necessity of its being, by its own nature's need.
Richard WagnerRead