I don’t like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.

When you’re a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don’t actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I’ll do, and especially when I’m in New York, I’ll go for a run. And I’ll run 10 or 15k on my – and I run to gain my appetite.

Fame itself… doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.

The victor belongs to the spoils.

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

In war, you win or lose, live or die – and the difference is just an eyelash.

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

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.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

Some day I shall be President.

I didn’t know what a stockbroker was when I was eight, but I would just tell everybody that’s what I was going to be.

I’ve always wanted to live above my means because it inspired me to work harder.

Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed – there’s so little competition.

A lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing and getting the most users. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.

I was a little worried that young people would think the only game was being political and manipulative when really the bigger game is being so good at what you do that nobody can argue with your results.

I’ve been talked about by a lot better people than the general public.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

What I’ve learned is that you really don’t need to be a celebrity or have money or have the paparazzi following you around to be famous.

I’ve done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they’re going to be compared directly against other ads.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

If you’re entering anything where there’s an existing marketplace, against large, entrenched competitors, then your product or service needs to be much better than theirs. It can’t be a little bit better, because then you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer… you’re always going to buy the trusted brand unless there’s a big difference.

In the world today many people rightfully feel entitled to have success and the good things in life, but they usually understand it will require sacrifice and hard work.

Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete.

I don’t know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

I have more friends in New York than Paris.

Hip hop has always been braggin‘ and boasting and ‚I’m better at you than this‘ and ‚I’m better at you than that.‘

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

No matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain… You’re always threatened by other women, period.

There’s Madeleine, and then there’s ‚Madeleine Albright‘. And I sometimes kind of think, who is this person? Once you become ‚Madeleine Albright‘ it doesn’t go away.

Instead of being concerned that you have no office, be concerned to think how you may fit yourself for office. Instead of being concerned that you are not known, seek to be worthy of being known.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

I love New York. I’m a guy for whom a New York accent is a comforting thing.

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

We want to play the AFC Cup every year.

Some people want to win races. Other people want to be President of the United States.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

In England, when an athlete gets to the top, we do our best to destroy him.

I was born in Africa. I came to California because it’s really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don’t see a viable competitor.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

We have teams of people working on electric cars. So you never know – you may find Virgin competing with the Tesla in the car business as we do in the space business.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.

Small aim is a crime; have great aim.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.

The seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad.

It’s rule number one, really – beating your teammate.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

I’m not really a Hollywood person. Not that I don’t like L.A., but I’m just a Northern California guy.