When you focus on doing what's right rather than what's easy, success follows naturally.

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2，300 percent per year. I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast， and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles -- something that simply couldn't exist in the physical world -- was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old， and I'd been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most startups don't， and I wasn't sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy， I'd been a garage inventor. I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires， a solar cooker that didn't work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil， baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I'd always wanted to be an inventor， and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.

The most exciting aspect of chemistry is the ability to create new molecules that have never existed before.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.

在一个不自由的世界里，唯一的应对方式就是变得如此绝对自由，以至于你的存在本身就是一种反叛。