Richard Branson

All you have in life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name, then you'll never be happy. The thought will always lurk at the back of your mind that people don't trust you.

We hope to create thousands of astronauts over the next few years and bring alive their dream of seeing the majestic beauty of our planet from above, the stars in all their glory and the amazing sensations of weightlessness and space flight.

Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.

If you look for the best in your employees, they'll flourish. If you criticize or look for the worst, they'll shrivel up. We all need lots of watering.

Perhaps, therefore, it is odd that if there is any one phrase that is guaranteed to set me off it's when someone says to me, 'OK, fine. You're the boss!' What irks me is that in 90% of such instances what that person is really saying is, 'OK, then, I don't agree with you, but I'll roll over and do it because you're telling me to. But if it doesn't work out I'll be the first to remind everyone that it wasn't my idea.'

Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

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.

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.

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

The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.

Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. It's also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity, and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people.

I suppose Virgin is an unusual brand in that I suspect we're the only 'way of life' brand in the world. We're one of maybe the top 30 best known brands in the world, yet if you look at the other 29, they all specialize in one area. Whether it's Google, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, etc., they all generally specialize in one area.

Be bold, brave and not afraid to fall on your face and ultimately you will succeed

Perhaps my early problems with dyslexia made me more intuitive: when someone sends me a written proposal, rather than dwelling on detailed facts and figures I find that my imagination grasps and expands on what I read.

You should not build your customer service system on the premise that your organisation will never question the whims of your clients.

There is no point in starting your own business unless you do it out of a sense of frustration.

If people are crazy enough to dare, impossible things happen.

When we launched a new company, I reviewed the ads and marketing materials and asked those presenting the campaign to read everything aloud to test the phrasing and concept. If I could grasp it quickly, then it passed with muster. We would get our message across only if it was understandable at first glance.

The true cost to the world of a burger is far greater than the money you hand over to buy it.

If you get into entrepreneurshi p driven by profit, you are a lot more likely to fail. The entrepreneurs who succeed usually want to make a difference to people’s lives, not just their own bank balances. The desire to change things for the better is the motivation for taking risks and pursuing seemingly impossible business ideas.

When hiring somebody, I never ask to see a curriculum vitae. I feel that since I didn't have one myself, it would be a bit presumptuous to ask to see anyone else's.