What's dangerous is not to evolve.

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.

It's not an experiment if you know it's going to work.

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it's government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about - they weren't putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.

The special ops guys and the firefighters around the world have this great phrase. They say, 'Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,' and that is true. Everything I've accomplished in my life has been because of that attitude.

The vision is to figure out how there can really be dynamic entrepreneurialism in space.

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it's not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works.

We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business.

If you don't understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

Strip malls are history.

I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category.

Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.

Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you - what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind - you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy.