Richard Branson

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

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

Life is a helluva lot more fun if you say yes rather than no.

What’s the quickest way to become a millionaire? Borrow fivers off everyone you meet.

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.

Not everybody is some kind of media model.

They encouraged me to always look for the good in people instead of assuming the worst and trying to find fault.

I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

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.

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.

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.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

You now have to decide what ‘image’ you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.

Burdening people with debt is an old deal not a new deal.

My advice to budding property developers: do it on the cheap and you’ll get a cheap price. Don’t avoid putting in skirting just because it’s hidden by a sofa.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

It is regrettable that people think about our monetary system, and of our economic structure, only in times of depression.

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

A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.