The first thing to look for when searching for a great employee is somebody with a personality that fits with your company culture. Most skills can be learned, but it is difficult to train people on their personality.

When you are ready to make your first hires, look for people who understand your passion, want to add to your ideas and can envision ways to make improvements.

What can you do to make a difference? And why should you do it? (...) the scale of one's social investments doesn't matter. What matters is that you operate as a force for good at every scale available to you.

We went all the way down the Himalayan chain for a day and a half. That was magnificent, except the Chinese told us they were going to shoot us down if we came out the far end. So I spent a lot of my time contacting former Prime Minister Tony Blair begging him to tell the Chinese we were coming in this direction by mistake and could he please say we have no nasty motives for flying into their territory.

Many assume my business success has brought me happiness. But the way I see it, I am successful because I am happy.

I was never, ever interested in becoming a businessman or an entrepreneur. If I was a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.

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.