It’s safe to say headphones is a good business.

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

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.

As an entrepreneur, I have been known for taking risks throughout my career, but leaving the European Union is not one of the risks I would want the U.K. to take – not as an investor, not as a father, and not as a grandfather. I am deeply concerned about the impact of leaving.

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.

Are we a nation that educates the world’s best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs, businesses, and industries right here in America?

I don’t think the government should be in the trailer-park business. I don’t think they know how to run a trailer park.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

Mr. Morgan buys his partners; I grow my own.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.

I wasn’t born a natural entrepreneur. I had to be trained.

And you know, I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

Outsourcing is inevitable, and I don’t think it’s necessarily treating people like things.

We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

Everybody could be an entrepreneur, but very few will become very rich entrepreneurs.

If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.

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.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

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.

No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.

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. I could always sell a few, even if I couldn’t sell a lot, and somehow my business grew because people happened to like it. I’m in a fortunate position.

Although I don’t like the way the Chinese do business, I continue to do business in China. I have to. They’re the next world power.

Football is big business – you can’t get away from it. But you have to separate that side from the playing.

I’m touring the world, not doing nothing against the law, getting money to feed my family. I got employees that have felonies, and they can’t get jobs. They work for me.

If you’re in this business and you are scared, then you better do something else.

There’s no reason why I can’t be a mogul. When I step into a room and I’m there to have a conversation, if it pertains to business, I want to be respected as a guy who knows what he’s talking about. And that, to me, holds more weight than anything else.

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.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

To keep the business going, you gotta keep it boomin‘.

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

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

As I followed my dream – stayed in-Spirit, that is, inspired – I made more money in the first year after I gave up my employment than I had made in the previous 35 years of my life.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

I would hear stories about Steve Jobs and feel like he was at 100 percent exactly what he wanted to do, but I’m sure even a Steve Jobs has compromised. Even a Rick Owens has compromised. You know, even a Kanye West has compromised. Sometimes you don’t even know when you’re being compromised till after the fact, and that’s what you regret.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.

I’m not a macroeconomics person.

The problem with real estate is that it’s local. You have to understand the local market.

If I have cash and I can’t figure a way to put it into real estate or my business, I hold it in gold and silver.

For me the greatest source of income is still movies. Nothing – stocks, financial speculation, real estate speculation or businesses – makes more money for me than making movies.

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’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

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.

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

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.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

I think you can give a pure artistic product if you understand how to build your own industry.

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.

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

Good entrepreneurs are community builders, actively involved with their communities and dedicated to the community’s well being. If you’re dedicated to your community, it will be dedicated to you.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

The business aspect is one of the most important things about having a music career, because every choice you make in a management meeting affects your life a year-and-a-half from now.