We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Jeff BezosRead
Work hard, have fun and make history.
Interpretation
Achieving greatness requires dedication, enjoyment, and leaving a lasting impact.
This quote by Jeff Bezos emphasizes the importance of hard work in the pursuit of success while also highlighting the joy that should accompany this effort. It suggests that not only should individuals strive diligently towards their goals, but they should also find pleasure in their work, as this combination can lead to making a significant and memorable contribution to the world.
In practice
A motivational speech at a corporate event to inspire employees.
We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
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.
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.
An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.
For so long, I looked at myself as literally a kid who was talented who would go up and down the pool. That's it. Nothing else. Very few people knew who I really was.
Men weren't always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.
Your brand or your name is simply your reputation, you have to fight in life to protect that as it means everything. Nothing is more important.
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.
It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back.
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