If you look for the best in your employees, they'll flourish. If you criticize or look for the worst, they'll shrivel up. We all need lots of watering.

With space travel, [it's] no different. You know, in 1990 I read the name Virgin Galactic Airways. Loved the name. And set out to try to find an engineer or rocket scientist in the world who could build a safe, reusable rocket that could take people to and from space and we could start a whole new era of commercial space travel.

As we drifted to earth I sat up on the glass roof of the capsule, watching the beauty of the golden dawn as it broke over the desert. This was a day I never thought I'd see and the rising sun and growing warmth of the day seemed very precious. It made me aware that hard-won things are more valuable than those that come too easily. It reminded me to always enjoy the moment.

The jet stream is a very strong force and pushing a balloon into it is like pushing up against a brick wall, but once we got into it, we found that, remarkably, the balloon went whatever speed the wind went.

A generation ago, the image was that you had to trample everyone else down to succeed; but I don't believe that makes good business sense.

Any successful entrepreneur knows that time is more valuable than money itself.

I moved into a nice houseboat in Little Venice when I was 15 years old. I found a girlfriend called Monday and a houseboat called Friday, so I had the week sewn up.