A Quote by Richard Branson

I always tell other people to protect against the downside, and not risk roughing on new ventures, but I never stuck to that rule myself. — © Richard Branson
I always tell other people to protect against the downside, and not risk roughing on new ventures, but I never stuck to that rule myself.
You can never protect yourself 100%. What you do is protect your self as much as possible and mitigate risk to an acceptable degree. You can never remove all risk.
I think one can easily make a case for taking out Saddam Hussein. In fact, one could probably be made on humanitarian grounds alone. But just as there's a downside risk to doing nothing about this man, there is a very serious downside risk to invading the country.
It is only by being bold that you get anywhere. If you are a risk-taker, then the art is to protect the downside.
Throughout my business life I have always tried to keep on top of costs and protect the downside risk as much possible. The Virgin Group has survived only because we have always kept tight control of our cash. But, likewise, I also know that sometimes it is essential to break these rules and spend lavishly.
You can never protect yourself 100%. What you do is protect yourself as much as possible and mitigate risk to an acceptable degree. You can never remove all risk.
I spoke to a bunch of University of Houston students and said, 'One of the beauties of the free enterprise system we have in this country is that there's capital that people are willing to put at risk for new ventures and startups.'
I don't think I'm a risk-taker. I don't think any entrepreneur is. I think that's one of those myths of commerce. The new entrepreneur is more values-led: you do what looks risky to other people because that's what your convictions tell you to do. Other companies would say I'm taking risks, but that's my path - it doesn't feel like risk to me.
Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.
I always wanted to be that guy who pushed the envelope in all kind of ways and tried something new. When I keep that rule going, it always takes me to a new place. There are times when I fail miserably, but I always find myself knowing one more thing better, doing one more thing that I never did before.
My mother has always been the point I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she'd been gone, I felt like I'd been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn't. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I'd left behind.
I have an assuredness of myself. I never protect myself against it.
It is the rule which says that the other rules of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not protect any statement in science against falsification.
I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.
As an adventurer...I try to protect against the downside. I make sure I have covered as many eventualities as I can. In the end, you have to take calculated risks; otherwise you're going to sit in mothballs all day and do nothing.
[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government.
An entrepreneur is somebody who is taking bold risks, is often doing things that have never been done before, trying to do things better. And an adventurer is challenging themselves, often doing things that have never been done before, seeing what they're capable of. In both cases, you've got to protect against the downside.
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