Roman Abramovich

After the situation with Kursk submarine, I started looking at Mr. Berezovsky in a completely different way. For me, it was a turning point in our relationship. I think that he took a completely dishonorable position.

I have no Napoleonic dream. I’m just hard-working and pragmatic.

In my personal opinion, Russia is no less democratic than it used to be. It is a democratic country. It is democratic enough.

When I started to make more or less serious money – for those times – then, of course, I wanted to show everyone that life is different: it’s a new kind of life; we are earning this money. We wanted to pay taxes and live honestly.

Our strategy [at Chelsea] is to bring up our own players through the academy, which we have invested a lot in, and hope it gives results.

I myself never make any notes. Usually, if I write something down, I can’t read it afterwards.

Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.

It took only 10 minutes to do Chelsea deal with Roman Abramovich but I had to Google him first … I wasn’t sure if Jeremy Beadle was going to jump out.

Chris and I came from nothing. We’re selfmade. We started with nothing, so we have nothing to lose. And we have everything to gain.

[On Calvin Klein asking him ‘Why don’t you call it Geffen Records?’] People in the record business just don’t do that. They come up with names likes Asylum, Capricorn, or Island. [Calvin Klein said if you put your own name on the door ‘You’ll get laid more.’]

Hire character. Train skill.

When bankers get into business they usually destroy it.

You don’t learn to walk by following rules, you learn by doing and by falling over.

[In 1990 on the president of MCA calling and saying ‘We’re going to make you the biggest offer this company has ever made, and I’m going to send it to you by messenger right now.’] It’s 1990. Send me a fax.

I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world.

Well, I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

We, we – as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far.

There are good examples of companies – Coca-Cola is one – that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come.

I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.