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.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

Often people become our friend or follower with an undercurrent of resentment in our having more success than they have. They secretly desire the opportunity to take us down a notch; they have a nose for any misstep on our part they can exploit.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

I never smoked. I never drank and I never took drugs. The funny thing is, nothing is more boring, people like this. For me, it’s OK. But most of my friends, at least they smoke and drink.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

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?

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure – the law firms, the real estate, all that – that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.

Do your job. Do it the best you can. Do it right, because somebody, sometimes your best friend, is waiting for you to screw up so she can take your place.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

I’m good friends with Jay Leno, good friends with Ed O’Neill, Melanie Fiona and Russell Simmons.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

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

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?

People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.

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.

In 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

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

Confidentially, the type of male I find most enjoyable for a friend is one who has enough fire and assurance to speak up for his convictions.

Science arose from poetry… when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

I always wanted to have a headphone line but I feel like I’m going to do more than just headphones eventually, but we want to wake the world up right now with this.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

I gave my archive to Emory University because there’s a really dear friend who teaches there, Rudolph Byrd, and he’s the editor.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has, as Minister Livni knows, has been my friend for over 30 years. We drive each other crazy. But he has truly been a personal friend for well over 30 years. He acknowledged this.

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.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

A true friend encourages us, comforts us, supports us like a big easy chair, offering us a safe refuge from the world.

To get a hold on boys you must be their friend.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.

Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under a McCain administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change.

Often we can help each other most by leaving each other alone; at other times we need the hand-grasp and the word of cheer.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

Politics is just a function of business now, just a tributary of the great entrepreneurial capitalist system.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

My mom and I have always been really close. She’s always been the friend that was always there. There were times when, in middle school and junior high, I didn’t have a lot of friends. But my mom was always my friend. Always.

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.

All you need to do to be my friend is like me.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

I’m not looking to get away from anything. I like what I’ve done. I like what I get to do and I enjoy working with my friends. I loved those movies, but this is incredible.

I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons.

Acquaintances we meet, enjoy, and can easily leave behind; but friendship grows deep roots.

God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.

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 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.