My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever.”
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JB
Jeff Bezos
Founder and former chief executive of Amazon; founder of Blue Origin
United States · b. 1964
Technology
About
Founded Amazon in 1994 and served as its chief executive until 2021, then as executive chairman. Founded the spaceflight company Blue Origin in 2000. Graduated from Princeton University in 1986.
3 answers
What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
That blank sheet of paper stage is one of the hardest stages, and one of the reasons it’s hard is because at that stage there’s nobody counting on you but yourself. Today it’s easy because we’ve got millions of customers counting on us, and thousands of investors counting on us, and thousands of employees all counting on each other. In that beginning stage it’s really just you, and you can quit any time. Nobody is going to care, so you set about doing the simple things first.
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