The real competition is never rivals, but users' old habits.

I cannot but be astonished that Socrates， after having so often repeated to his fellow citizens that he did not pretend to any wisdom， but had been appointed by the gods to a mission of benevolence towards them， should have been condemned to death.

I don't really believe in failure. I believe in learning.

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.

我们这个时代最重要的政治挑战是创建强大、有效和负责任的国家。