Felix Dennis quotes

Felix Dennis was a British publisher, poet, and entrepreneur known for founding Dennis Publishing. He was also a successful author, with several best-selling books to his name. Dennis was widely recognized for his sharp wit, wit, and bold personality. He passed away in 2014, leaving behind a legacy of innovation and creativity in the publishing industry. Learn more about Felix Dennis and his incredible journey in the world of media and literature.

To become rich you must be an owner. And you must try to own it all. You must strive with every fibre of your being, while recognising the idiocy of your behaviour, to own and retain control of as near to 100 per cent of any company as you can. If that is not possible, in a public company, for example, then you must be prepared to make yourself hated by those around you who are also trying to be rich. That is the dirty, rotten little secret of it all, my friend.

- Felix Dennis

America is an empire. I hope you know that now. All empires, by definition, are bumbling, shambolic, bullying, bureaucratic affairs, as certain of the rightness of their cause in infancy, as they are corrupted by power in their dotage.

- Felix Dennis

America is not the center of the universe.

- Felix Dennis

Anyone not busy learning is busy dying.

- Felix Dennis

Believing your own bullshit is always a perilous activity, but never more fatal than for the owner of a start-up venture.

- Felix Dennis

Discourse has ended in America. It's all just shouting and ranting and demonization. Do you know how the rest of the world laughs at you guys? Have you got any idea? They're just rocking with laughter night and day.

- Felix Dennis

Do not be shy to call customers who owe you money. It works.

- Felix Dennis

False praise is worse than no praise.

- Felix Dennis

I adore my readers, I like my advertisers, but I don’t adore them. I adore my readers. Everything I publish is for my readers.

- Felix Dennis

I am a born-again atheist, so there isn’t going to be a funeral. I will be buried in a linen wrap in a cardboard coffin in my forest with an oak tree planted on my head.

- Felix Dennis

I am one of the finest magazine publishers in the world. That’s not braggadocio — I refuse to engage in false modesty — it’s what I am.

- Felix Dennis

I couldn’t care less what anyone’s ‘perception’ of me is. I’m too long in the tooth to care.

- Felix Dennis

I don't take investment advice from wealth managers. I have grown several businesses from scratch and amassed many millions from my publishing empire - why would I take advice from someone who has never experienced that?

- Felix Dennis

I have one talent, and that's figuring out what people want about two minutes before they know it themselves.

- Felix Dennis

I loathe and detest movies and television and don't watch any. I do not have the time.

- Felix Dennis

I only buy a computer when it's two years old, after the glitches have been worked out.

- Felix Dennis

I think having a great idea is vastly overrated. I know it sounds kind of crazy and counterintuitive. I don’t think it matters what the idea is, almost. You need great execution.

- Felix Dennis

I thoroughly object to getting old. If you could let me be 16 again, I'd give you everything I've got and everything I'll ever have.

- Felix Dennis

If I get lung cancer, I will die by an overdose of crack cocaine with an 18-year-old perched on top of me — I absolutely swear to you I will.

- Felix Dennis

If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it. It's cheaper in the long run.

- Felix Dennis

It's kind of a crazy thing to decide that you're going to be worth tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars and set out to do that. It doesn't suit everybody.

- Felix Dennis

Knowing isn't doing; doing isn't knowing. Nothing but the knowing and the doing gets it done.

- Felix Dennis

Let’s get real. I mean, you know, if you had millions of pounds, and you could be in love with half a dozen beautiful women at the same time, and they were happy with that arrangement, would you? Or would you like to be married and have children? Choose!

- Felix Dennis

Money is power. Power is an aphrodisiac.

- Felix Dennis

Native trees are so important to our ecosystem.

- Felix Dennis

No poetry that I’m aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it.

- Felix Dennis

Nobody could like Donald Trump, surely, except his mother. No one really likes The Donald. But how can you not have respect for a guy who's been down on the floor and just keeps coming back? Nothing will keep Donald Trump down until they drive a wooden stake in his heart and a silver bullet in his brain.

- Felix Dennis

People who get trapped in the tunnel vision of making money think that is all there is to life.

- Felix Dennis

Rich people always have a certain degree of debt. Apparently it helps to reduce taxes. I’m not so hot on the bean-counting side.

- Felix Dennis

Say to yourself: The world is full of money. Some of it has my name on it. All I have to do is collect it.

- Felix Dennis