You've got so many groups that have no voice in this world - the indigenous, the poor. So how can I use the resources that I have and bring them up, highlight them. And it's not that difficult. It's just choosing and concentrating and focusing.

I can't bear to be around people who are bland or bored or uninterested (or to employ them).

The money that we make from the company goes into The Body Shop Foundation, which isn't one of those awful tax shelters like some in America. It just functions to take the money and give it away.

I'm an activist and I come from a very socialist background. For me, my thinking was formed by great thought leaders. And wealth preserving wasn't part of my thinking.

business itself is now the most powerful force for change in the world today, richer and faster by far than most governments. And what is it doing with this power? It is using free trade, the most powerful weapon at its disposal, to tighten its grip on the globe.

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

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.