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.
Success is not measured by what you do compared to what somebody else does. Success is measured by what you do compared to what you are capable of doing.
In the business world, I did fairly well, but wasn't happy. A bout of sciatica put me flat on my back. All I could do was read, listen to my mother's stories about the Sandovals, and daydream: a return to self. My writing career had begun.
I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night.
Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.
I'm at the top of my game so, when I win or lose, I don't freak out...I don't think we can call it a rivalry yet. There's just to many great players around.
I wanted to distance myself from those pasty faced corpses in suits I saw in airline magazine ads. If I was going to become a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.
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