Richard Branson Years Quotations

We've always had a pretty competitive and pretty ferocious battle with British Airways... It's lasted now about 14 years, and we're very pleased to have survived it.

So I've seen life as one long learning process. And if I see - you know, if I fly on somebody else's airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn't in - 21 years ago, then I'd think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I'd like to fly on.

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I - if I'm not interested in something, I don't grasp it.

We believe that within five years, 96 percent of British consumers will have access to the Internet, whether it be through a personal computer, a set-top box or a mobile phone.

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

Actually, we did a fun April Fools' thing with Google a couple of years ago, which we called Virgle. And we looked for volunteers to go on a one-way trip to Mars.

In 30 years time, as technology moves forward even further, people are going to look back and wonder why offices ever existed.

It took me years to work out the difference between net and gross. In meetings I just used to say, 'Tell me if it's good or bad news.

We don't actually plan to launch new businesses over the next few years, but we are planning to take the ones we have into new territories.

I just wanted to create things that I could be proud of. Money was just an evil byproduct to pay the bills at the end of the year.

My very first venture was a national student magazine to try to campaign against the [Vietnam] War. And so I wanted to be an editor. I wanted to bring the magazine out. And in order for the magazine to survive I had to worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing and the distribution. And, you know, I had to try to, at the end of the year, have more money coming in than going out.

The Earth cannot wait 60 years. I want a future for my children and my children's children. The clock is ticking.

Look, I think that when we started Virgin Atlantic 30 years ago, we had one 747 competing with the airlines that had an average of 300 planes each. Every single one of those have gone bankrupt because they didn't have customer service. They had might, but they didn't have customer service, so customer service is everything in the end.

I like to set myself a new adventure challenge at least once or twice a year because I love that side of my life. I love getting fit and training for it.

I truly believe that capitalism was created to help people live better lives, but sadly over the years it has lost its way a bit. The short-term focus on profit has driven most businesses to forget about the important long-term role they have in taking care of people and the planet.

The brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit.

Surprisingly, a large number of people who fell out with their partners contacted us, saying that they would love to fly on a Virgle spaceship. But out of April Fools' jokes come real things, and I wouldn't be surprised, within the next 50 years, [if] there are one-way trips heading out into space with people on it. It would be very exciting.

The quality of business communications has become poorer in recent years as people avoid phone calls and face-to-face meetings, I can only assume, in some misguided quest for efficiency.

The war on drugs has gone on for about forty-five, fifty years - and it's been a complete failure. If you had a business that was failing so badly, you would change course. And it's just incredible that governments continue along the same course.

There are no quick wins in business - it takes years to become an overnight success.

On conflicts, generally speaking, the world is a hell of a lot better to live in today than it was thirty years ago, despite what's going on in Syria. There are definitely hopeful signs that the world is moving, decade by decade, in the right direction.