Interview Quotes

On the Washington Post's Endorsement Decision

"And so we just decided that the pluses of doing this were very small, and it added to the perception of bias."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:05:38

"Look, if I had had the prescience to think about this topic at all two years before, that would have been better for perception reasons. But, in fact, we made this decision. It was the right decision. I'm proud of the decision we made. And it was far from cowardly, because we knew there would be blowback. And we did the right thing anyway."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:07:29

"No, I'm a terrible owner of the post for the post from the point of view of appearance of conflict. I there is, you know, I find not a single day goes by where some Amazon executive or some Blue Origin executive or some Bezos Earth Fund leader... is it meeting with a government official somewhere? And so there are always going to be appearances of conflict."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:08:48

On Optimism and Regulation

"I'm very optimistic that President Trump is serious about this regulatory agenda. And I think he's going to, I think he has a good chance of succeeding."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:15:05

"Well, I think he, I'm going to try to talk him out of that idea. I don't think the press is the enemy."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:16:26

On Competition in Space

"No, I was headed there. Oh, sorry. I'm just saying, they're certainly very good competitors. And, you know, no doubt about that. I don't, I take at face value what has been said, which is that, you know, he is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors. I take that at face value."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:18:32

On the Future of the Washington Post

"You know, we saved the Washington Post once. This will be the second time. I would like to save, let's see, 2013. So 11 years ago. It took a couple of years. It made money for six or seven years after that. In the last few years, it's lost money again. And it needs to be put back on a good footing again."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:21:14

On the Overview Effect and Saving Earth

"And it has a name. It's called the overview effect. Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 astronaut and later Moonwalker, has a beautiful quote. When he saw the Earth from space, he looked back and said, I realize you don't go to heaven when you die. You go to heaven when you're born."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:25:22

"For whatever reason, since I'm a teenager, and in fact, there's a high school newspaper article, Miami Palmetto Senior High. They wrote an article about my space plans, which I would tell everyone who would stand still long enough about. And those plans included what I still think, what I am still working on, which is moving all polluting industry off Earth."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:27:22

"So first of all, there is no plan B. We have to save Earth. So we've sent robotic probes to all of the planets in this solar system. This is the good one, and we must save it."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:31:00

On the Moon as a Stepping Stone

"There's a very strong argument to be made that the moon is a good stepping stone to the rest of the solar system. And the reason for that, because the moon has a much lower gravity level than the earth, and because it has a lot of very important minerals, and also water in the form of ice in the permanently shadowed craters at the poles of the moon."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:35:18

On Confidence and Risk

"Well, I think, first of all, a very good question, very interesting question. And I'm not sure I know the right answer, or maybe there are many answers, so let's start with that. But one observation I would have is that I think it's generally human nature to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity. And so I think entrepreneurs in general, you know, would be well advised to try and bias against that piece of human nature."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:42:46

"I sold 20% of the company, at a $5 million valuation, I sold 20% of the company for a million dollars to 22 angel investors, roughly $50,000 each. And I had to take 60 meetings..."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:45:37

"And, uh, and that's a better list. You know, what, uh, how much wealth have you created for other people? You know, people like Jensen and NVIDIA, he's going to be very high on that list."

— Jeff Bezos • 00:51:03

On His Role as an Inventor and Messy Meetings

"You know, I, I gave up on being well understood a long time ago. I kind of thought, I realized it was a, um, it's kind of, it would take so much energy and you'd probably still fail, you know, so like, to be understood is to difficult."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:03:07

"No, in fact, I am very skeptical if the meeting is not messy. One time, it doesn't happen very often because it's kind of verboten at Amazon. But I could tell in the meeting that the team had rehearsed the meeting. That happens."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:00:25

"I don't want to be pitched. And you don't want any of your senior executives to be pitched. You want, and that's why messy is good."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:01:53

On Leaving Amazon and His Role

"Um, I, even when Amazon was a tiny company, for whatever reason, I always had in my mind that I wanted to build a company that would outlast me. And so I've always been thinking about it in that framework and, uh, how it could, could, could kind of grow up into a young adult and be set off into the world, uh, uh, successfully and independently."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:04:46

"My heart is in Amazon. My curiosity is Amazon. My fears are there. My love is there. I'm never going to forget about Amazon. I'll always be there to help."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:07:45

On AI and its Potential

"So I mean, there are a few things, but it's a small thing, but it's 95% AI. And where do you think? It's just so, because there, we're literally working on a thousand applications internally. So AI, you have to remember AI, modern AI is a horizontal enabling layer. It, it, it, it will, it, it can be used to improve everything. It will be in everything."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:08:54

"It is absolutely competitive. So it is, it benchmarks extraordinarily well. It's a world-class foundation model. It's a frontier model. And, and it's very, very price performance."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:11:39

"Oh, it excites me. I'm not, are you, no, I'm not worried. No, I'm not scared."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:14:08

On Meaning and Technology

"Really, your meaning is coming from your relationships, you know, uplifting people. So, like, if you, if you think about it, by the way, the uplifting can be very local. It's like if you're just uplifting your brother and sister, you're uplifting your kids, you're uplifting, you know, your friends and the people in your community, you're going to get meaning from that."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:16:15

"I, I am not addicted to social media. I go in and look and, and I try to mine it for ideas sometimes. And, and it, it, it is, uh, it's a lot of work to find the little nuggets of there, where there are some, like, I, I follow a bunch of people who I think are really smart."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:17:39

On His Daily Routine and Work Ethic

"I, I, I work from about nine to seven in meetings. I mean, it's meetings from nine to seven. It's, uh, and then I have a bunch of documents I read outside of that. Uh, I get energy from that."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:19:31

On What the World Misunderstands About Him

"It's, you know, in my case, I think of myself as an inventor. That's what I am. And I wake up every day and I follow my curiosity and I explore and I really am an inventor. I'm very good at that."

— Jeff Bezos • 01:25:39