We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Jeff BezosRead
I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.
Interpretation
It's better to conduct numerous interviews and make no hires than to select the wrong candidate.
This quote emphasizes the importance of careful selection in hiring processes. Jeff Bezos suggests that making a poor hiring decision can have significant negative consequences for an organization, reinforcing the idea that investing time in identifying the right fit is worth more than making a quick decision resulting in a mismatch.
In practice
In a team meeting discussing the new hiring policy.
We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Work hard, have fun and make history.
If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.
When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn't for you. It's for the Presidency.
Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.
When pressure mounts and strain increases everyone begins to show the weaknesses in his makeup. It is up to the Commander to conceal his: above all to conceal doubt, fear, and distrust.
Our leaders should certainly engage passionate advocacy of needed reforms, and equally strong criticism of policies they believe are destructive to America. But, from the school boards to the White House, let's elect more candidates who are committed to constructive dialogue and reasonable compromises.
A lot of people ask what it takes to move from being a creative to a leader: Take everyone's career personally. People will work hard for you if you work hard for them. Any idiot can be a boss; all you need is a title. But to be a leader, you need to earn respect and have an opinion you stand by.
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