In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.

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.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

I pay attention to politics and technology.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

After launching the first version of Facebook for a few thousand users, we would discuss how this should be built for the world. It wasn’t even a thought that maybe it could be us. We always thought it would be someone else doing it.

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.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Why should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure?

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world… If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

The march of the human mind is slow.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren’t historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.

What I’m trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.

To innovate is not to reform.

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.

Infrastructure web services had to happen.

With Kansas, I had a four-year deal. The initial two months were real tough. I had to adjust a lot. Then, things started looking up.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

My first phone was two tin cans tied together with string, and it worked pretty good.

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the Clinton administration, though neither side completely lived up to their obligations. Clinton didn’t do what was promised, nor did North Korea, but they were making progress.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

People use technology only to mean digital technology. Technology is actually everything we make.

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?

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.

Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.

Games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

But Apple really beats to a different drummer. I used to say that Apple should be the Sony of this business, but in reality, I think Apple should be the Apple of this business.

America thrived in the 20th century because we made high school free. We sent a generation to college. We cultivated the most educated workforce in the world.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.