Richard Branson Quotes

I think long-term, not short-term.

If you do not look at things on a large scale, it will be difficult to master strategy.

By playing at Chess then, we may learn: First: Foresight... Second: Circumspection... Third: Caution...And lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favorable chance, and that of persevering in the secrets of resources

I refuse to make a decision that somebody else can make. The first rule of leadership is to save yourself for the big decision. Don't allow your mind to become cluttered.

The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess.

Consider the bigger picture.....think things through and fully commit!

I'm not the best gamer - I think you need to be strategic and level-headed, and you need to remain calm under pressure... and I don't really have those qualities!

I would say my strengths are vision and strategy.

I learned to play chess at a young age, and I think that's where learning to plan things out and put things in position, that was the best thing for me.

Let us not confuse objectives with methods. Too many so-called leaders of the nation fail to see the forest because of the trees. Too many of them fail to recognize the vital necessity of planning for definite objectives. True leadership calls for the setting forth of the objectives and the rallying of public opinion in support of these objectives.

Men of action," whose minds are too busy with the day's work to see beyond it. They are essential men, we cannot do without them, and yet we must not allow all our vision to be bound by the limitations of "men of action.

You can’t look too far ahead. Do that and you’ll lose sight of what you’re doing and stumble. I’m not saying you should focus solely on the details right in front of you, mind you. You’ve got to look ahead a bit or else you’ll bump into something. You’ve got to conform to the proper order and at the same time keep an eye out for what’s ahead. That’s critical, no matter what you’re doing.

Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.

Vision rarely require immediate action. It requires patience.

You have to commit to the what, before the how shows up.

We need people who can see straight ahead and deep into the problems. Those are the experts. But we also need peripheral vision and experts are generally not very good at providing peripheral vision.

You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

I think three-to-five years ahead minimum. I have a short-term plan, a five-year plan and a decade plan.

I just go into a game and try to look at the situation and what needs to be done. I try to execute.

I think that one of the things that I can do is I seem to have the ability to zoom in super tight for very small details, but then jump back for sort of that big picture perspective. And I think that ultimately, that's one of my strengths, because you have - every detail matters.

You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Thinking about the future is fundamentally important to dealing with the challenges of today.

Storytelling enables us to play out decisions before we make them, to plan routes before we take them, to work out the campaign before we start the war, to rehearse the phrases we're going to use to please or placate our wives and husbands.

Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation.