The tragedy of great power politics is that it leads to conflict and war.

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.

The success of a society depends on its ability to balance the demands of individual freedom with the need for social cohesion.

看一个人的操守，在其利害得失时；看一个人的精力，在其饥饿疲倦时；看一个人的度量，在其面临喜怒哀乐时；看一个人的沉着，在其有惊吓时。

【译文】 孔子说：“我十五岁立志于学习，三十岁有所建树，四十岁不困惑，五十理解自然规律，六十明辨是非，七十随心所欲，不违规。”