Richard Branson

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

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

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.

It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.

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

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.

Success comes from failure, not from memorizing the right answers.

If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

I don’t think people get to be successful unless they have very strong egos.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

It’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful and that you’ve made a lot of money and that you’ve employed a lot of people.

You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.

Can success change the human mechanism so completely between one dawn and another? Can it make one feel taller, more alive, handsomer, uncommonly gifted and indomitably secure with the certainty that this is the way life will always be? It can and it does!

I’ve become very successful over the years. I think I own among the greatest properties in the world.

To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can’t just accept the ones you like.

One of the problems when you become successful is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow. There are people-I categorize them as life’s losers-who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others. As far as I’m concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting me, they’d be doing something constructive themselves.

I think I was born with the drive for success because I have a certain gene.