Richard Branson Quotes

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

Money is only interesting for what it lets you do and create.

What does the name Virgin mean? We are a company that likes to take on the giants. In too many businesses, these giants have had things their own way. We are going to have fun competing with them.

You can never go too far wrong by thinking like a customer who’s new to the business.

By nature I am curious about life, and this extends to my business.

Well, I'm somebody who is just living ...living life, and if I get frustrated by something, then I like to try to put it right.

Records are made to be broken. It is in man's nature to continue to strive to do just that.

LEARN FROM FAILURE. If you are an entrepreneur and your first venture wasn't a success, welcome to the club.

In business, as in life, all that matters is that you do something positive.

The quality of business communications has become poorer in recent years as people avoid phone calls and face-to-face meetings, I can only assume, in some misguided quest for efficiency.

I think entrepreneurship is our natural state--a big adult word that probably boils down to something much more obvious like playfulness.

An exceptional company is the one that gets all the little details right.

If you have an idea that's going to make a big difference to people's lives, and other people are not doing it, you know, just say "screw it," do it and get on with it, and give it a go.

We Experiment Endlessly, With New Products, New Methods, New Companies And New Marketing. A Successful Business The Emphasis Is On Experiment And Development, Ideas Are The Lifeblood Of Business.

When we start a new venture, we base it on hard research and analysis. Typically, we review the industry and put ourselves in our customer's shoes to see what we could do better.

And you know, I've had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

I have enjoyed life a lot more by saying "yes" than by sayings "no".

I think it's important we continue to find new ways for start-up businesses to get access to funding, mentorship and business advice.

I believe that drudgery and clock-watching are a terrible betrayal of that universal, inborn entrepreneurial spirit.

The time to go into a new business is when it’s badly run by others.

Building a business is not rocket science, it's about having a great idea and seeing it through with integrity.

Take the competition seriously, but not yourself.

Purpose is not an add-on, it’s not an initiative. It is a culture change and it never finishes

If you don't succeed at first, there's no need for the F word (Failure). Pick yourself up and try, try again.

Space travel will be like every other business. There will be competitors. . . . Thirty months from now, I'm confident we'll be flying people into space.

Every aspect of life is magnificent and wonderful. It's so important to keep fit and healthy.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

If you find yourself stuck in the middle there is only one way to go, forward.

Whether you are launching a start-up or leading an established company, you should start establishing your social media presence if you haven’t already.

When you are making a decision about how best to serve your customers, your own experience is often a better guide than a more sophisticated analysis of the market.

We're going where no one has gone before. There's no model to follow, nothing to copy. That is what makes this so exciting.

I have always looked on my businesses not just as money-making machines, but as adventures that can, I hope, make people better off.

Set impossible challenges. Then catch up with them.

Don't hesitate to seek external help or advice where need be. Sometimes, it takes an external, emotionally unattached individual to detect your business flaws and render unbiased advice.

Well, we know that people in Australia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it's fun to be able to deliver it.

Every single astronaut who has come back from space comes back determined to do more to protect it.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

Seek out strategic alliances; they are essential to growth and provide resistance to bigger competition.

So I've seen life as one long learning process.

The best advice I got from my dad? Wear a condom.

Business leaders take things far too seriously, and forget that most of the time people spend in their lives is at work, and it should be fun.

Running a business is making a difference in people's lives

Everything in your business can be outsourced... if you're not emotionally attached to doing it all.

Universities are fantastic places to gain knowledge on a subject, develop a personal network, explore your character and learn new techniques to approach problems.

When I started Virgin from a basement flat in West London, I did not set out to build a business empire. I set out to create something I enjoyed that would pay the bills.

Free publicity and word of mouth is probably the best and cheapest form of advertising. Learn to use it to your advantage.

Allowing my people to have a good work-life balance by working flexibly is very important to me.

You can create a business, choose a name, but unless people know about it you're not going to sell any products.

I never set out to be a businessman