A great advantage I had when I started The Body Shop was that I had never been to business school.

a social conscience is not incompatible with profit.

If I had to name a driving force in my life, I would name PASSION every time

Whatever you do, be different - that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can't think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you're different, you will stand out.

I run my company according to feminine principles, principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy or all those dreadfully boring business-school management ideas; having a sense of work as being part of your life, not separate from it; putting your labor where your love is; being responsible to the world in how you use your profits; recognizing the bottom line should stay at the bottom.

I think that business practices would improve immeasurably if they were guided by "feminine" pinciples, qualities like love, care, and intuition.

It's frustrating sometimes to see the mismatch in resources between the pointless and the urgent, isn't it. Like the gap between the vast resources poured into military technological research to make war more sophisticated, and the trickle that goes into developing techniques that might prevent war instead.