Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
At Virgin, we have always backed the power of the entrepreneur and inventor to find solutions to tricky problems. Why should climate change and the battle against carbon be any different?
I love travelling full stop - so while I've had some harrowing instances, I never look at them negatively. Memories are made when you're travelling - not when you're chained to your desk.
One of my beliefs about leadership is it's not how many followers you have, but how many people you have with different opinions that you can bring together and try to be a good listener.
The success of one market model cannot be migrated to another. Ignoring Macau's special characteristics and duplicating a Las Vegas or an Atlantic City would not be a successful strategy.
My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader and the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death. My father was a businessman and politician. I was actually raised by my grandfather.
We will be producing supersonic planes which will go far, far faster than Concordes. New York to Tokyo could be less than an hour. You could be traveling at 19,000 miles an hour orbitally.
I learnt earlier on that If you can run one company.You can really run any company.A company is all about finding the right people and inspiring those people,drawing out the best in people
You develop millionaires the way you mine gold. You expect to move tons of dirt to find an ounce of gold, but you don't go into the mine looking for the dirt-you go in looking for the gold.
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
I think women need to be kinder to other women. I think once we realize that, shoulder to shoulder, walking in the same direction, we're the greatest force of nature…our destiny can change.
We are going to transform Britain's rail system from the worst in the world to the best. If you can do a few things like that, when the body gives out, you can say you've lived a good life.
I've lived through periods of illiquidity before. Asset prices come down. The economy slows or even goes into recession. Then the cycle re-starts. We buy at lower prices with less leverage.
Economics seeks to be a science. Science is supposed to be objective and it is difficult to be scientific when the subject matter, the participant in the economic process, lacks objectivity.
Many leaders of big organizations, I think, don't believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you're likely to have issues.
In the '80's my gut feeling was that airlines were crap. I hated spending time on planes. I thought we could create the kind of airline I'd like. So we got a secondhand 747 and gave it a go.
People will always work harder if they're getting well paid and if they're afraid of losing a job which they know will be hard to equal. As is well known, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
You can't compare eras. But drivers of each era adapt to the needs and climate of their time. There are good and bad points to every era of the sport. I'm not really nostalgic about the past.
Taking this view, it is possible to see financial markets as a laboratory for testing hypotheses, albeit not strictly scientific ones. The truth is, successful investing is a kind of alchemy.
I am impressed with just the enthusiasm for life and the fact that some of these people are in their 80's, even 90's, and they're absolutely determined to get out there and make a difference.
I think I've learned that if you have a house, you end up living in the kitchen, so if you have one big kitchen and then enough bedrooms for your family, that's about all you need for a home.
So unlike having to convert, you know, all the cars' or all the lorries' petrol stations, once you've actually got the clean fuels, it's relatively easy to, you know, get it to the airplanes.
This country, of course, needs fundamental reform of our financial regulatory system, as I, and many other financial institution executives, have publicly advocated for a considerable period.
Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends-the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.
As I small child and hearing all the stories about him I, of course, looked up to him as some kind of miracle. Then I got to eight years old and suddenly I was taller than [Bernie Ecclestone].
[Olympics] obviously, is not the easiest thing to do, and nobody makes any money out of. Yet, for the small amount of money they could [invest] in a Formula One race, they don't want to do it.
If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one's conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.
We have a mantra: don't be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.
Of course an individual can make a huge difference but it is when those individuals come together with like-minded souls that they can change the world for ever and importantly for the better.
Overcoming fear is the first step to success for entrepreneurs. The winners all exemplify that, and the hard work and commitment they have shown underlines what is needed to set up a business.
Don't go into something you actually don't know much about, in the hopes that you're going to get really financially successful and rewarded... even though people think you're, like, terrific.
To be successful, keep looking tanned, live in an elegant building (even if you're in the cellar), be seen in smart restaurants (even if you only nurse one drink) and if you borrow, borrow big.
Learn to raise capital by any means necessary. That's your primary job as an entrepreneur. You must continually raise capital from family and friends, banks, suppliers, customers and investors.
Ironically, when a bunch of very smart people are sitting around a table for hours trying to figure out whether they should do something, that tends to not necessarily lead to the best results.
I think women of our generation went through Cultural Revolution, went through hardship, coming from nowhere, and suddenly see China's amazing opportunity. So women just seized the opportunity.
As an anonymous participant in financial markets, I never had to weigh the social consequences of my actions ... I felt justified in ignoring them on the grounds that I was playing by the rules.
If you sell to the rich, you will become poor. If you sell to the poor, you can become rich. It is easier to get one peso from a million poor people than to get one million from one rich person.
One of our big goals in search is to make search that really understands exactly what you want, understands everything in the world. As computer scientists, we call that artificial intelligence.
You can't look at the intrinsic value of gold as you can a business. Gold doesn't give you cash flow, and, at the end of the day, cash flow is what is important. Gold doesn't give you dividends.
You're offering a great service. People are tuning in. So continue to find great people, continue to do what you're doing. And do it better than your rivals. I know that's easier said than done.
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.
Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth, and the Law of Competition... these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit.
I'd rather the handshake for somebody that I can trust than a contract. Because you can read the bloody contract - perhaps if you made a little bit of a mistake writing it - in a way to suit you.
People do not mind people who try things and fail. If you're a good entrepreneur, you're not going to succeed in every single thing you try. You've got to try to succeed at more things than fail.
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.
Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.
As the world has become more predatory and aggressive, my impression is that the investment banking business has moved from being relationship-oriented to being increasingly transaction-oriented.
The sound rule in business is that you may give money freely when you have a surplus, but your name never-neither as endorser nor as member of a corporation with individual liability
I think in the end officials in each country's judicial system will do what they believe is right because if they do something bad to somebody it's on their conscience for the rest of their lives.
I was educated to think maybe Brazil works, maybe it doesn't. But I decided I am going to make this country work for my children. I am investing all my effort now in making Brazil a great country.
The trouble with institutional investors is that their performance is usually measured relative to their peer group and not by an absolute yardstick. This makes them trend followers by definition.