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.

译文：家境纵然贫寒，也要让孩子读书学习；人即使飞黄腾达了，也不能忘记耕种劳作的艰辛。赏析：积金千两，不如明解经书。有田不耕仓廪虚，有书不读子孙愚。从古至今，无数的先贤都在告诉我们，读书是有很多好处的。贫穷不忘恩，富贵不忘本。

"The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds."

Brand building is a long-term project that requires sustained efforts from generations.

根本不稳固必然会央及枝叶。行为不守信必然会损害声誉。

I'm interested in the tension between control and chaos.