Richard Branson Quotes

You won't catch me giving clear lectures.

You cannot send mixed signals---not only to the American people but to the rest of the world.

I still haven’t figured it out completely.

I spend a substantial amount of my time endeavoring to fend off questions, and worry terribly that I might end up being too clear.

Language can be used to so many diverse ends. It can be used to clarify and, of course, it can be used to obfuscate, confuse, evade.

If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better.

Bill Clinton pandered by telling you what you wanted to hear. John Kerry panders by never telling you what you don't want to hear. This is negative pandering; he talks a lot without really ruling anything out so you can draw your own conclusions.....Kerry has been talking for years, and yet such is the thicket of his verbiage that he has achieved almost complete strategic ambiguity.

We understand what the difference is between what we understand and what the community understands about what we're doing because they have supported us long enough for me to stay out here, while other people who are doing other things have not. A lot of people have trouble pinning down what it is we do and how. But we don't have any trouble with that. As long as that's their problem, it's their problem.

The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.

in show business there's not much point in asking yourself if someone really likes you or if he just thinks you can be useful to him, because there's no difference.

To know much is often the cause of doubting more.

Is that clear?" said Borcht "as clear as pea soup" I said

Disagreement is a rare achievement, and most of what is called disagreement is simply confusion.

There’s no doubt in my mind that McMurphy’s won, but I’m not sure what.

When the situation is obscure, attack

It is not confused. We are.

I'm always interested in understanding the math of things and understanding as much as I can about all aspects of business. And what I learn today may be useful to me two years from now. That's really the wonderful thing about investments is your knowledge is cumulative.

I jerked to a stop at the door to my room. "What's wrong with my boots?" I said, thinking they were the only thing that I was going to keep on. Ah…the only thing from this outfit, not the only thing total.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

when driven to the necessity of explaining, I found that I did not myself understand what I meant.

By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.

The minute a thing is long and complicated, it confuses. Whoever wrote the Ten Commandments made 'em short. They may not always be kept, but they are understood.

When we started, it was based on lies. It's changing now. There are no secrets in the business. You've got to come with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's becoming very confusing.