Richard Branson

The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

Listen – it makes you sound smarter.

A touch of the jitters sharpens the mind, gets the adrenaline flowing and helps you to focus.

Acquiring the habit of note-taking is therefore a wonderfully complementary skill to that of listening.

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.

The thought in my mind was that I must be a good merchant. If I were a good merchant, the rest would probably take care of itself.

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

Clock watchers never seem to be having a good time.

There’s no better friend to any merchant than a fair competitor.

Success will always be measured by the extent to which we serve the buying public.

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

You have an idea of the way you think it is, and it’s not that way at all, it’s something else.

The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal.

I always look at it that I work with my employees as opposed to them working for me.

The problem with the bronco is to get on and stay on. This is the problem with the Golden Rule-to understand and apply.

Fairs and public displays are the best means we have yet found of showing large numbers of people the real methods of industry.

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose… the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

If you find out what men want and give them that, you are pleasing them. If you find out what is good for them and give them that, you are performing a service. That’s what we are trying to do.

[To his ex-entertainment lawyer Eric Eisner who resigned from the presidency of The David Geffen Company in 1991 just as a deal was about to be made with some Japanese] Keep your stock. [Eric sold it.]