Any time an investment company has to spend heavily on advertising, it’s probably a bad business in which to invest.

A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers. I think it’s the most ridiculous concept.

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.

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

There may be less of a chance of losing all the money you put into a mutual fund than there is of losing all the money you put into lottery tickets, but you’re never going to win big in a mutual fund.

In the simplest terms, inflation occurs when there’s too much money in the system. On the flip side, deflation occurs when there are too few dollars in circulation.

I’ve never gone into business to make money. Every Virgin product and service has been made into a reality to make a positive difference in people’s lives. And by focusing on the happiness of our customers, we have been able to build a successful group of companies.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

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

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin‘ on, I then got the money, and gone.

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

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.

A lot of advertising has gotten worse. I think it’s kind of lost its nerve, to be honest with you. I feel like the advertising of the ’60s, they were nervier. You know why? Because there was less at stake.

The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.

Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

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.

Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

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.

I always loved advertising. If I hadn’t been in fashion, I’d have been in advertising.

Most businesses think that product is the most important thing, but without great leadership, mission and a team that deliver results at a high level, even the best product won’t make a company successful.

A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It’s my favorite part of the business, live concerts.

Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

Money is a strange business. People who haven’t got it aim it strongly. People who have are full of troubles.

In my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted.

You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

I think that every artist – or anybody that’s in business – could benefit from a direct-to-consumer strategy, so I think that that applies to us as artists and content creators, too.

A tremendous amount of the entrepreneurial initiative, if you want to call it that, comes from the dynamic state sector on which most of the economy relies to socialize costs and risks and privatize eventual profit. And that’s achieved by, if you like, advertising.

Driving up the value of the advertising is a big commitment for Microsoft.

I always wanted to have a headphone line but I feel like I’m going to do more than just headphones eventually, but we want to wake the world up right now with this.

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.

Finding good partners is the key to success in anything: in business, in marriage and, especially, in investing.

For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.

England is a nation of shopkeepers.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

Learn to invest in investments where you can achieve an honest, legal advantage over other investors. When it comes to investing, why play on a level field?

If you must invest in paper, learn to be an options trader. Then you will know how to make money whether the markets are going up or down.

During the Enron debacle, it was workers who took the pounding, not bankers. Not only did Enron employees lose their jobs, many lost their retirement savings. That’s because they were at the bottom of the investing food chain.

One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.

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.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

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

Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men.

As a precious metal, silver is also money.

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

I would never do a commercial if I thought it was offensive to anyone.

What I invest in, while not risky for me, may be too risky for most people.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

Everyone knows that when you look at a television ad, you do not expect to get information. You expect to see delusion and imagery.