We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Jeff BezosRead
We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.
Interpretation
Stay committed to your vision while being adaptable to the specifics that may change.
This quote by Jeff Bezos highlights the importance of having a clear and unwavering vision, which serves as a guiding star for one's endeavors. However, it also emphasizes the necessity of being flexible and open to adjusting the details or methods in achieving that vision, recognizing that the path to success may require alterations in tactics and approaches as circumstances evolve.
In practice
In a team meeting discussing project goals, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of staying true to the main objectives while being open to changes in tactics.
We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Work hard, have fun and make history.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do they think that I am such a damned fool as to think myself fit for President of the United States? No, sir; I know what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way, but I am not fit to be President.
Observing many companies in action, I am unable to point to a single instance in which stunning results were gotten without the active and personal leadership of the upper managers.
Adolf Galland said that the day we took our fighters off the bombers and put them against the German fighters, that is, went from defensive to offsensive, Germany lost the air war. I made that decision and it was my most important decision during World War II. As you can imagine, the bomber crews were upset. The fighter pilots were ecstatic.
Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character.
The president can't change the country on his own. But what can he do? He can give an example.
The challenge we now face is to build on the record of the past, to continue accepting new responsibilities and seeking new opportunities to serve.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.