Jeff Bezos

“If I do my job right, the value to society and civilization from my for-profit companies will be much, much larger than the good that I do with my charitable giving,”

“Ken Griffin isn’t a villain, he hasn’t hurt anybody, he’s not hurting New York, in fact quite the opposite.”

“The way … you make $1 billion, or $100 million or $10 million or anything, is you create a service that people love, and if millions of people choose your service, you’re going to end up with a billion dollars,”

“It’s kind of a tale of two economies,”

“You have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well, but you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling.”

“So what’s happening here is, politicians are using the kind of age old technique ... you know, picking a villain and pointing fingers, but the problem is that doesn’t solve anything,”

“You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens,”

“How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes?”

“It's because investors at this moment haven't learned yet how to discriminate between good ideas and bad ideas, and that's OK, because the good ideas will pay for all of the losers,”

“Even if it does turn out to be a bubble, you shouldn't worry about it because the bubble is driving investment and a lot of the investment is going to turn out to be very healthy,”

“A lot of investors lost money on certain things, but we still got to keep all the life-saving drugs that they had invented.”

“I would caution people who think it’s all science fiction to be a little cautious with their judgment, because it is real, it is happening.”

“There's something very powerful about zero.”

“1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all the tax revenue; the bottom half pay only 3%. I think it should be zero,”

“But you can't hoard investment. So if you have stock in a company, that's not hoarding. That's investing. And investing is more like farming,”

“I think that extra 10 years of experience actually improved the odds that Amazon would succeed,”

“There's a lot of stuff you would learn in a great company that will help you, and then there's still lots of time to start a company after you have absorbed it.”

“The only time I ever think about it, genuinely, is when a doctor asks me to fill out a form.”

“picking a villain and pointing fingers.”

“A nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year pays more than $12,000 a year in taxes,”

“stand in front of Ken Griffin’s house and act like he is some kind of villain,”

“Does that really make sense?”

“That nurse in Queens … it’s not going to help her at all,”

“People sometimes say that, you know, I don’t pay taxes. Not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes,”

“It’s not correct on its face,”

“We already have the most progressive tax system in the world,”

“Just try it with a chicken franchise.”

“I’m a little skeptical that that’s a true loophole, but if it is, can we fix it? Then we should.”

“The problem is, that doesn’t solve anything,”

“I’m selling Amazon stock routinely.”

“You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you.”

“certainly a perfectly valid policy debate.”

“Some people talk about making the tax system more progressive,”

“It’s probably going to happen faster than most people think.”

“We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington.”

“They should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.”

“It's kind of a tale of two economies.”

“Ken Griffin isn’t a villain. He hasn’t hurt anybody. He’s not hurting New York. In fact, quite the opposite,”

“Policy debates don’t have to be finger-pointing.”

“Where does this anger come from?”

“I enjoyed college and I think it's been helpful to me.”

“learned a tremendous amount”

“The reality, as far as I’m concerned, is that my dad [Mike] is my natural father,”