I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the side, and we’ve funded ever since by putting ads on the side.

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.

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.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

We get paid for bringing value to the market place.

I’m in this business to be creative – I’ll even diminish it and say to be a content provider.

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.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

Video is growing very quickly on Facebook. A lot of people compare that to YouTube. I think that kind of makes sense. YouTube isn’t the only video service, but I think it’s the biggest, and it probably makes more sense to compare Facebook video to YouTube rather than Netflix because that’s a completely different kind of content.

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.

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.

We, we – as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.

The thing that’s been really surprising about the evolution of Facebook is – I think then, and I think now – that if we didn’t do this, someone else would have done it.

Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.

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.

The greatest story of all is Colonel Sanders. He didn’t start until he was sixty-six on a freeway bypass for his chicken shop. Anything is possible!

But, having a perfume and license, in general, is a financial necessity. A designer must, to reap back the money spent on prototypes and all that sort of thing.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.

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

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

The rich don’t work for money – the rich invent money.

I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that if Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have.

For the general public or psychos on Facebook, for everyone who’s made one negative comment about me, I’ve probably gotten 250-300 positive comments.

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.

The thing most people don’t pick up when they become an entrepreneur is that it never ends. It’s 24/7.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

What really motivates people at Facebook is building stuff that they’re proud of.

I support immediate financial assistance to the newly elected Palestinian president. Now, I don’t know what those numbers will be, and I don’t know how it’s going to be framed.

The vision is to figure out how there can really be dynamic entrepreneurialism in space.

I see fighters make funny videos about me and stick them on Facebook and get 20 likes. When I make a video, I sell it to Fox and make seven figures. That’s the difference.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune.

I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

I hate writing about personal stuff. I don’t have a Facebook page. I don’t use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don’t use them.

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.

I think I’ve got my business notions and my sense for that sort of thing from my dad. My dad never had a chance to go to school. He couldn’t read and write. But he was so smart. He was just one of those people that could just make the most of anything and everything that he had to work with.

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 mean Facebook is no longer a company, it’s a country. 2 billion users. It can influence what we think, what we believe, how we vote, what we buy, even how we feel.

It’s rare for a startup to make money immediately, so you need to make sure that you have enough saved or that you have another income stream that can support you.

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

You cannot make a giant space company in your dorm room. Not today. And the reason is that the heavy lifting infrastructure isn’t in place.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: ‚If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?‘

I don’t like begging money from producers.

I think Facebook is an online directory for colleges… If I want to get information about you, I just go to TheFacebook, type in your name, and it hopefully pulls up all the information I’d care to know about you.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents‘ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.

My task over the last two years hasn’t just been to stop the bleeding. My task has also been to try to figure out how do we address some of the structural problems in the economy that have prevented more Googles from being created.

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

We talk about this concept of openness and transparency as the high-level ideal that we’re moving towards at Facebook. The way that we get there is by empowering people to share and connect. The combination of those two things leads the world to become more open.

There are a few other things that I built when I was at Harvard that were kind of smaller versions of Facebook. One such program was this program called Match. People could enter the different courses that they were taking, and see what other courses would be correlated with the courses they are taking.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Starting your own business isn’t just a job – it’s a way of life.

What changed our lives forever was when Malcolm had the idea to sell rock ‚n roll records to trendy customers.

My goal was never to make Facebook cool. I am not a cool person.

With Virgin, I’ve just loved creating things. And as a private company, I can get away with moving Virgin from records to airlines to train companies to space companies to whatever, without ever having to worry about analysts knocking the value of my stock.

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.

We want Facebook to be one of the best places people can go to learn how to build stuff. If you want to build a company, nothing better than jumping in and trying to build one. But Facebook is also great for entrepreneurs/hackers. If people want to come for a few years and move on and build something great, that’s something we’re proud of.