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

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

If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

I’m not a macroeconomics person.

I played a great horse yesterday! It took seven horses to beat him.

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.

With all the… success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.

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

Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.

There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a young mogul. I’m blessed.

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 or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

Percentage margins don’t matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.

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

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

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

As a child, when asked what I would be, I usually said I was going to be a huntsman. A fine profession, truly!

All you have in business is your reputation – so it’s very important that you keep your word.

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.

A man should never neglect his family for business.

If your payloads cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they actually cost more than the launch. It puts a lot of pressure on the launch vehicle not to change, to be very stable. Reliability becomes much more important than the cost. It’s hard to get off of that equilibrium.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror, we must not waver.

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

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

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

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.

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.

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.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin‘ on, I then got the money, and gone.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

I like Mr. Gorbachev, we can do business together.

If you can build a business up big enough, it’s respectable.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

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.

I only change things where I know about a situation. I’d never change just for change.

Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.

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

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.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

We’re running the company to serve more people.

Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.

There is nothing so stable as change.

The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of the recession because that would just suck up and take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.

I start each book when it’s ready and never before.

Stability is when the U.K. and U.S. invade a country and impose the regime of their choice.

I’m not in the business of ranking or debating who is what.

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

For the first time we’re allowing developers who don’t work at Facebook to develop applications just as if they were. That’s a big deal because it means that all developers have a new way of doing business if they choose to take advantage of it. There are whole companies that are forming whose only product is a Facebook Platform application.

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

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

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.

Pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.