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.

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.

生下来就知道的人是上等，经过学习才知道的人是次一等，遇到困惑才学习的人是又次一等，有了困惑而不学习的，这是最下等的人。

人死之后，除了名声，什么也带不走。

The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

告诉我动机，我会告诉你结果。

漂亮的女人休要让她老去，风流浪的子不要让他贫困。

【译文】 曾子说：“我每天都要多次提醒自己：工作是否敬业？交友是否守信？知识是否用于实践？”