Richard Branson

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.

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.

While I love technology and social media, a text or a tweet can never replace the real value of conversation.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

Success cannot come from standstill men. Methods change and men must change with them.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

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.

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.

The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money.

Our modern industrialism, changed to motives of public service, will provide means to remove every injustice that gives soil for prejudice.

A manufacturer is not through with his customer when a sale is completed. He has then only started with his customer. In the case of an automobile the sale of the machine is only something in the nature of an introduction. If the machine does not give service, then it is better for the manufacturer if he never had the introduction, for he will have the worst of all advertisements-a dissatisfied customer.

In New York and Los Angeles, you can throw your car keys to the valet and he parks it. Same in Hong Kong and Singapore, the service is off the scale. In London it’s sub-standard to abysmal.

London has got better as it’s become more international – you only have to look at the quality of the restaurants to see how improved it’s become.

If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

The epiphany for me at William Morris was realizing, ‘They bullshit on the phone! I can bullshit on the phone too!’

[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 did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.

Competition is the lifeblood of industry.

It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.