I was a risk-taker as a young man, and I don't regret it. I'm not adventurous in quite the same way now, but I still love the challenge of testing myself to the limits, flying around the world, or seeing if I can be the first to fly a balloon across the Atlantic, or trying to take people into space at an affordable price in an environmentally friendly way. I'll be going into space with three generations of my family!

I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.

On conflicts, generally speaking, the world is a hell of a lot better to live in today than it was thirty years ago, despite what's going on in Syria. There are definitely hopeful signs that the world is moving, decade by decade, in the right direction.

You're offering a great service. People are tuning in. So continue to find great people, continue to do what you're doing. And do it better than your rivals. I know that's easier said than done.

Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to.

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.

Perhaps my early problems with dyslexia made me more intuitive: when someone sends me a written proposal, rather than dwelling on detailed facts and figures I find that my imagination grasps and expands on what I read.