At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

I was a good football player, and I had a chance to play with some great players.

If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

I can move any crowd.

We will naturally pursue our goals on the strength of our own resources, skills and enterprise. But, we know that we will be more successful when we do this in partnership with the world.

Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

And of course to work with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, and work with a wonderful, beautiful script directed by Nancy Meyers, it was really for me a dream come true.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

I love dresses, and I’ve definitely thought about designing them someday. I just want to make sure that I wait until the time is perfect and I can do it right.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

I have short goals – to get better every day, to help my teammates every day – but my only ultimate goal is to win an NBA championship. It’s all that matters. I dream about it. I dream about it all the time, how it would look, how it would feel. It would be so amazing.

The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance.

My game is really played above time. I don’t say that like I’m saying I’m ahead of my time. I’m saying, like, if I’m on the court and I throw a pass, the ball that I’ve thrown will lead my teammate right where he needs to go, before he even knows that that’s the right place to go to.

You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.

The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them.

California is not just the Golden State. We are also the Internet State.

There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn’t how we’ve approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

The most genius thing about the way I create is to create with other geniuses.

To not be modest about it, you’ll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I’ve worked with have done their best work by far with me.

I feel good because I believe I have made progress in rebuilding the people’s trust in their government.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

But I do not believe that the world would be entirely different if there were more women leaders. Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

At Virgin, we have always backed the power of the entrepreneur and inventor to find solutions to tricky problems. Why should climate change and the battle against carbon be any different?

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

To innovate is not to reform.