To be or not to be this is the question......

SIR RICHARD BRANSON QUOTES

Top 10 Richard Branson Quotes About Business, Success & Life Inspirational entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Galactic, and over 400 other Virgin-branded enterprises has been successful in business since age 16. Because of this, his improvisatory phrases are oft-quoted in money and lifestyle publications much to the delight of those tired of hearing billionaires give standard answers to standard questions.

Branson’s absolute love of life is apparent in the way he runs his businesses and is in large part responsible for his success. From what I consider his top ten quotes, perhaps you can be inspired to implement some zest into your own business and personal life.

Famous Quotes by Sir Richard Branson

1. “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”

 Plain and simple, if you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you are going to have a hard time doing it well and being successful. Sure, you can head to work and sit at a desk job all day that you don’t really like, but will you ever own the business itself or be in control of day-to-day decisions? Probably not. Branson is so successful not just because he works hard and is lucky, but because he has fun and enjoys his work.

2. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

 If everyone only followed a single set of rules, nothing new would ever be implemented. For example, Google changed the online search game by thinking differently about how it could be done. Jeffrey Hollender started Seventh Generation, which helped bring environmentally friendly household products to the masses when they were previously only for true “greenies.”

If you stick to the status quo and don’t look outside the norm for inspiration, you limit yourself as an individual and in your business. Doing something different than the way it was done in the past can be a catalyst for success. And don’t let failure discourage you – it’s bound to happen when you’re trying and perfecting ingenuity.

3. “Ridiculous yachts, private planes, and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.”

 Branson enjoys his money for sure, and he should – he earned it after all. But he also realizes that it’s not necessarily the money that is making him happy; it’s a combination of attitude, experience, and the responsible use of money. To have wealth and only flaunt it doesn’t lead to bliss, contrary to what those without it often think

.4. “As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.”

 Success on Branson’s level doesn’t come solely from his own work ethic. He hires the right people and then lets them do their thing. Try seeing the company or business you are in as bigger than yourself and trust that other people are concerned about the bottom line as you are. When everyone works together towards the same goal, the payoff in the end can be greater for all.

5. “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”

 If you close yourself off to new opportunities out of ignorance or fear, you might miss your next big idea or concept. When one project you start doesn’t work out, guess what – there are always plenty more to try. So get cracking!

6. “My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long university education that I never had – every day I’m learning something new.”

 When you aren’t learning, you aren’t growing. And without growth, it’s hard to succeed in the long-term. Branson keeps trying something new; some projects fail and some go on to be huge achievements. Who knew that in 2011 we would see the beginning of space flight for tourists through Virgin Galactic?

7. “What does the name Virgin mean? We are a company that likes to take on the giants. In too many businesses, these giants have had things their own way. We are going to have fun competing with them.”

 By competing with the existing players in any given field, Branson is trying to change the way companies do business. Tired industries get used to doing things their way and regularly fail to improvise, innovate, and challenge themselves to do better. Branson competes with these businesses by offering consumers innovation and improvement – and he is succeeding in getting them to pay for it.

8. “To be successful, you have to be out there, you have to hit the ground running, and if you have a good team around you and more than a fair share of luck, you might make something happen. But you certainly can’t guarantee it just by following someone else’s formula.”

 Forge your own path, as they say, and keep pushing until you get to your end goal. Imagine if Bill Gates didn’t want to push computers into the mainstream, but instead just wanted to build mainframe closet-sized machines for the government to use? We would have gotten the laptop computer eventually, but it may have taken a lot longer. Rare is the person who creates something huge by following in someone else’s footsteps; Branson most certainly did not.

9. “Above all, you want to create something you are proud of. That’s always been my philosophy of business. I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive, then I believe you are better off doing nothing.”

 Again, we see that money cannot (and should not) be the exclusive catalyst for entering into any business or field of endeavor. At my last corporate job, I made a lot of money. But it was causing me undue health issues and stress, and I wasn’t at all happy there. While the money is nowhere near as good now, I am much happier being self-employed doing something I enjoy everyday. Plus, I am proud of what I am doing.

10. “I am prepared to try anything once.”

 How else can you know if something will or will not work? I really love this simple quote and I try to keep it in mind every single day. After all, what have you got to lose?

Final Word

There are many inspiring quotes from Richard Branson, of which these are just a few. They may be hard to remember word for word on a daily basis, but sometimes just reading them is enough to plant a seed or two of thought-provoking inspiration. I know Branson’s attitude towards life energizes me.

Who do you look to for inspiration either at work or at home? What are some of your favorite quotes?

Article by talanted Sashi Tharoor

New India, Old Europe

New India Old Europe 

NEW DELHI – The recent Indian-Italian bilateral dialogue, held in Milan on November 7, at a time when Italy was reeling from the euro crisis and Silvio Berlusconi’s impending political demise, offered a fraught reminder of the potential, and the limits, of India’s relationship with the European Union.

India has a long history of relations with Europe, going back to the days of the Roman Empire. Its southwestern state of Kerala boasted a Roman port, Muziris, centuries before Jesus Christ was born; excavations are now revealing even more about its reach and influence.

The discovery of ancient amphorae has confirmed that India used to import products such as olive oil, wine, and glass from Italy, in exchange for exotic items like ivory and spices. Interestingly, an ivory statue of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, dating back to the first century BC, was found during excavations of the ruins of Pompeii in southern Italy.

After languishing for centuries, trade is once more shaping the relationship between these two world regions. The EU is India’s second-largest trading partner, with turnover reaching €68 billion ($93.5 billion) in 2010, accounting for 20% of India’s global trade. Exports of services from Europe to India are worth €10 billion, while services imports are valued at a little more than €8 billion.

India has a several affinities with the EU, not least that it, too, is an economic and political union of linguistically, culturally, and ethnically different states. But, in practice, these affinities have not translated into close political or strategic relations.

In 1963, India was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with the European Economic Community (the predecessor to today’s EU), and the India-EU Strategic Partnership and Joint Action Plan of 2005 and 2008 offer a framework for security cooperation. But it will take time for the EU to develop a common strategic culture. The EU member states must develop a collective approach to national-security problems before meaningful strategic cooperation between the EU and India can occur.

Another important impediment to India-EU relations is that Indians don’t like anyone lecturing to them. One of the great failings in the EU-India partnership has been Europe’s tendency to preach to India on matters, such as human rights, that Indians believe they can handle on their own.

A democracy for more than six decades (longer than some EU member states), India regards human rights as a vital domestic issue. Neither Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, nor any European institution has exposed a single human-rights problem in India that Indian citizens, journalists, and NGOs have not already revealed and handled within India’s democratic political space.

Given this, the EU’s effort to write human-rights provisions into a free-trade agreement with India, as if they were automobile-emissions standards, gets Indians’ backs up. Trade should not be held hostage to internal European politics about human-rights declarations. On the actual substance of human rights, India and the EU are on the same side and have the same aspirations. Once this irritant is overcome, negotiations over the free-trade agreement, which have long been in their “final” stages, can be concluded, and should transform trade.

There is also room for technological cooperation. India’s abundant and inexpensive scientific brainpower and its growing reputation for “frugal innovation” offer interesting potential synergies with Europe’s unmatched engineering capacity.

Of course, there are serious structural impediments. Ironically, despite its human-rights rhetoric, the EU has long favored China over India: for every euro that the EU invests in India, it invests €20 in China. Admittedly, this is partly India’s fault, because it has not created an equally congenial climate for foreign investment.

Another stumbling block is that India prefers bilateral arrangements with individual member states to dealing with the EU collectively. Arguably, this is necessary, given European institutions’ lack of cohesion on strategic questions. Since the Maastricht Treaty created the EU in 1992, Europe has claimed to have a “common foreign policy,” but it is not a “single” foreign policy. If it were, EU member states would not need two of the five permanent seats on the UN Security Council, and be clamoring for a third.

Yet the case for India-EU cooperation could not be stronger, since the bulk of the world’s problem areas lie between India and Europe (or, as Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt once put it, between the Indus and the Nile).

The danger is that India could write off Europe as charming but irrelevant, a continent ideal for a summer holiday, not for serious business. The world will be poorer if the Old Continent and the rising new subcontinent fail to build on their shared democratic values and common interests to offer a genuine alternative to US-Chinese dominance.