Richard Branson is a British business magnate and billionaire entrepreneur. He formed the Virgin Group in the 1970s, owning over 400 companies in diverse areas. Branson has always wanted to be an entrepreneur since he was a child. At the age of 16, he started his first business, a student magazine.
He started a mail-order record company in 1970. In 1972, he founded Virgin Records—a record store chain known as Virgin Megastores. During the 1980s, Branson’s Virgin brand grew quickly as he launched Virgin Atlantic airline and established the Virgin Records music business. Branson formed the Virgin Rail Group in 1997 to compete for passenger rail franchises during British Rail’s privatization.
In 2004, he launched Virgin Galactic, a spaceflight company based in California’s Mojave Air and Space Port known for its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane built for space tourism. Let’s get into some of his famous quotes.
Richard Branson Quotes
“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity, but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”
“Respect is how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress.”
“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough, so they don’t want to.”
“There is no greater thing you can do with your life and your work than follow your passions – in a way that serves the world and you.”
“It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.”
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”
“You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work once. There are no rules. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and by falling over, and it’s because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It’s the greatest thrill in the world, and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.”
“In the same way that I tend to make up my mind about people within thirty seconds of meeting them, I also make up my mind about whether a business proposal excites me within about thirty seconds of looking at it. I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics.”
“The best lesson I learned was to just do it. It doesn’t matter what it is or how hard it might seem, as the ancient Greek, Plato, said, “The beginning is the most important part of any work.”
“There have been times when I could have succumbed to some form of bribe or could have had my way by offering one. But ever since that night in Dover prison, I have never been tempted to break my vow. My parents always drummed into me that all you have in life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name, you’ll never be happy.”
“Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business, and it has been key to everything I’ve done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin’s success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it’s certainly not how they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of ‘discounted cash flows’ and net present values.'”
Richard Branson Quotes on Space Travel
“I was once a child with a dream looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth. To the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, imagine what we can do.”
“Welcome to the dawn of a new space age.”
“It was magical.”
“I’m afraid nobody will be able to take them away from us — once you’re an astronaut, you’re always an astronaut.”
“It’s impossible to describe just how magnificent it is.”
“Space has always fascinated me. As a young boy looking up at the stars, I found it impossible to resist thinking about what was out there and if I ever would experience Space first-hand.”
“We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to Space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.”
“Space is hard – but worth it. We will persevere and move forward together.”
“Every single astronaut who has come back from space comes back determined to do more to protect it.”
“Whether we’re fighting climate change or going to space, everything is moved forward by computers, and we don’t have enough people who can code.”
“I’ve wanted to go to space since I was a kid, and I want to enable hopefully hundreds of thousands of other people over the next 100 years to be able to go to space.”
“How can anyone dislike this? This is so cool!!!”
“And why shouldn’t they go to Space? Space is extraordinary; the Universe is magnificent. I want people to be able to look back at our beautiful Earth and come home and work very hard to try to do magic to look after it.”
Who is the author of the Listed Quotes
Sir Richard Branson is a billionaire who can also be regarded as a space enthusiast. His company is building the Virgin Galactic, which will serve as a luxury means of traveling to Space for wealthy clients.
Conclusion
Alongside Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson is creating systems to help people get to space in style. Their projects are in competition of sorts. Having succeeded in other businesses, they have now decided to venture into tech, space, and the future.