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" I love creating hideaways. My idea is to go to the most beautiful, unspoilt places, buy the land, and make sure it is never damaged. I've always admired John D. Rockefeller, who bought up tracts of land to ensure they were left wild in perpetuity. "

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" Especially when you're at a high level in an organization, criticism can be devastating to an employee. I prefer to praise employees for what they're doing right, and it tends to lead to them doing more of the same. Not always, but it's the way I choose to bet. "

Richard Branson

Organization

You

Employees

" Well, we know that people in Australia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it's fun to be able to deliver it. "

Richard Branson

Love

People

" My favorite mode of transport is hot-air ballooning. It's so graceful to be blown by the wind, to go where the wind takes you. "

Richard Branson

Transport

Mode

" By putting the employee first, the customer effectively comes first by default, and in the end, the shareholder comes first by default as well. "

" Can you imagine what a different world we will live in when businesses do what's right for the communities and the environment in everything they do? "

" A complaint is a chance to turn a customer into a lifelong friend. I say that seriously, not as some press release baloney. "

" Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again. "

" We are going to transform Britain's rail system from the worst in the world to the best. If you can do a few things like that, when the body gives out, you can say you've lived a good life. "

" I love Africa, and Ulusaba, our home in South Africa, is pretty special. It's on a rocky hill overlooking the bush, and from your room, you can see lions stalking zebras by the waterhole. "

" When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes. "

Richard Branson

Reflection

Mirror

" If you are a small company taking on a big company, you need to have a sense of humor. "

" 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. "

" To me, business isn't about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It's about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials. "

Richard Branson

Ideas

Yourself

" My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, 'Oh God, I've got to do this today.' "

" 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. "

" We have teams of people working on electric cars. So you never know - you may find Virgin competing with the Tesla in the car business as we do in the space business. "

" Be willing to use yourself to get out there and put the company on the market. If you have to make a fool of yourself, make a fool of yourself, but make sure that you end up on the front pages, not the back pages. In time, it's possible that your company will stand out from the crowd, and you'll be successful. "

" 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. "

" From my very first day as an entrepreneur, I've felt the only mission worth pursuing in business is to make people's lives better. "

" 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. "

" With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights. "

" Space has always fascinated me. As a young boy looking up at the stars, I found it impossible to resist thinking what was out there and if I ever would experience space first-hand. "

Richard Branson

Space

Thinking

" From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That's how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically. "

Richard Branson

Good

People

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records. "

" When exploring London, you will come across lots of excitement by chance, so try to take everything in rather than just rushing around to all of the major tourist haunts. "

" The art of delegation is one of the key skills any entrepreneur must master. "

" Too many people measure how successful they are by how much money they make or the people that they associate with. In my opinion, true success should be measured by how happy you are. "

" Material things are delightful, but they're not important. "