From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I’ve felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people’s lives better.

But, the thing is, since I always had my own little shop and direct access to the public, I’ve been able to build up a technique without marketing people ever telling me what the public wants.

Every successful businessman will have experienced set-backs and failures – they’re lying if they say they haven’t. Virgin has had some tremendously successful businesses and some that have not quite worked out. Virgin Cola springs to mind – the product wasn’t distinct enough from Coca-Cola.

An important priority for me is a business must get their own house in order. Be or become an agent of positive change in your own enterprise and adopt responsible practices to eliminate the risks that often lie at the root of inequality and poverty.

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.

Start a part-time business and make as many mistakes as you possibly can while you still have your daytime job.

The richest people in the world look for and build networks; everyone else looks for work.

My business is to prevent the future.

Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.

People invest in businesses that they believe have the leadership, mission and team to grow and operate profitably.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

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

I built a company at the same time I built a career.

For me, it’s about becoming a mogul, owning my own projects, and establishing myself as a funding producer. That’s what’s big to me. The movies and all that stuff are great, but the fact that I’m in a position to do what I want to do, however I want to do it and when I want to do it is bigger.

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.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

It wasn’t until we got our first office in Palo Alto where things became more like a company. We never went into this wanting to build a company.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

When I started my last business, I didn’t receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can’t handle that pressure.

I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a young mogul. I’m blessed.

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.

Over a 10-year period, 99 out of 100 new entrepreneurs will fail. Only one will be left standing as others get pushed out of the market or burn out from working so hard. It’s really sad.

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.

Michael Jordan changed so much in basketball, he took his power to make a difference. It’s so much going on in music right now and somebody has to make a difference.

I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

A true capitalist doesn’t have a job, because other people and other people’s money work for them.

If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

Be willing to use yourself to get out there and put the company on the market. If you have to make a fool of yourself, make a fool of yourself, but make sure that you end up on the front pages, not the back pages. In time, it’s possible that your company will stand out from the crowd, and you’ll be successful.

To keep the business going, you gotta keep it boomin‘.

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.

I own my own company, so I’ve never had businessmen telling me what to do or getting worried if something doesn’t sell. I’ve always had my own access to the public, because I started off making my clothes for a little shop and so I’ve always had people buying them.

To me, we’re marketing hope.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

I’ve always had my own access to the public, because I started off making my clothes for a little shop, and so I’ve always had people buying them. I could always sell a few, even if I couldn’t sell a lot, and somehow my business grew because people happened to like it. I’m in a fortunate position.

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn’t collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.

Mr. Morgan buys his partners; I grow my own.

In business, if you realize you’ve made a bad decision, you change it.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

There’s no better place in the world for technology start-ups than Silicon Valley; there’s such an incredible well of talent and capital and resources. The whole system is set up to foster the creation of new companies.

America isn’t Congress. America isn’t Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

I was approached about having my own network many, many years ago. There were some people who wanted to start up a network, and I didn’t want to get that involved in the business aspect of it.

I got an album concept called ‚Exit Strategy,‘ that might be one of my last ones. It’s a term they use in business when you build companies. You create an exit strategy as you make a company. You don’t wait till you’re five years in it; you create a exit strategy as you make the company.