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.

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Some time ago, the United States was an English colony. If an Englishman were asked if the United States would be independent, he would have said no, that it would always be an English colony.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

The assertion that ‚all men are created equal‘ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that – building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.

With fools, there is no companionship. Rather than to live with men who are selfish, vain, quarrelsome, and obstinate, let a man walk alone.

We don’t want to wait on someone to hire us and give us a check. We want to create our own opportunities.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

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.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage.

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.

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

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.

If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.

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.

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.

If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

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.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

I go to Wal-Mart all the time. The one in my hometown of Hendersonville, Tenn., is open 24 hours, so I go there a lot to buy DVDs and stuff like that.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the ’40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

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

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

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

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 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.

All of us are in the same place, each with our own rooms, and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. Which is totally different than college, where they manage your schedule for you. In the NBA, you’re on your own.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

I’m a businessman as well as an entertainer. The reason why is because I want to own whatever I’m doing. I don’t want to work for other people forever.

I’m old enough and cranky enough now that if someone tried to tell me what to do, I’d tell them where to put it.

If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

Our position is that we do not accept conditions of any kind which may affect the independence and sovereignty of our country just with the view to solve economic problems existing between the United States and Cuba.

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.

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.

Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.

Bread without flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need – not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind of nourishment.

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.

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.

We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.

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.

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.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

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.

I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries.

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?

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.

I love big business!

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

I don’t need to publish to make a living.

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

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.