Top 100 Felix Dennis Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You’ll never get rich by working for your boss.”

— Felix Dennis

2. “Without self belief nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible.”

— Felix Dennis

3. “Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.”

— Felix Dennis

4. “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

5. “Teamwork is the glue which binds losers together.”

— Felix Dennis

6. “Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. They may facilitate success for an athlete who possesses them, but on their own they are nothing but an overpriced pair of sneakers. Sports shoes don’t win races. Athletes do.”

— Felix Dennis

7. “You have to persuade yourself that you absolutely don’t care what happens. If you don’t care, you’ve won. I absolutely promise you, in every serious negotiation, the man or woman who doesn’t care is going to win.”

— Felix Dennis

8. “Obviously, waste disposal is an enormous and fantastic industry.”

— Felix Dennis

9. “Knowing isn’t doing; doing isn’t knowing. Nothing but the knowing and the doing gets it done.”

— Felix Dennis

10. “Anyone not busy learning is busy dying.”

— Felix Dennis

11. “Most of the worst errors I made in my life came from forgetting to act small.”

— Felix Dennis

12. “Fear not. For fear itself is fed by fear, and all fears pass. Did no one tell you so? Come take my hand, my friend, and we will peer into this fear’s abyss. And jump! And know.”

— Felix Dennis

13. “America is not the center of the universe.”

— Felix Dennis

14. “If you are unwilling to fail, sometimes publicly and even catastrophically, you will never be rich.”

— Felix Dennis

15. “The belief that you have a great idea is not worth cuckoo spit. Ideas are ten a penny while the ability to execute counts for a great deal more.”

— Felix Dennis

16. “When you come across real talent, it is sometimes worth allowing them to create the structure in which they choose to labor. In nine cases out of ten, by inviting them to take responsibility and control for a new venture, you will motivate them to do great things.”

— Felix Dennis

17. “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

18. “You have an advantage that neither education nor upbringing can buy – you have almost nothing. And therefore you have almost nothing to lose.”

— Felix Dennis

19. “Having a great idea is simply not enough. The eventual goal is vastly more important than any idea. It is how ideas are implemented that counts in the long run.”

— Felix Dennis

20. “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

21. “Whatever qualities the rich may have, they can be acquired by anyone with the tenacity to become rich.”

— Felix Dennis

22. “Making money is certainly the one addiction I cannot shake.”

— Felix Dennis

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

— Felix Dennis

24. “Because ownership isn’t the important thing. If you want to be rich, it’s the only thing. THE.”

— Felix Dennis

25. “This modern mania for interfering in other’s lives, usually under the guise of health and safety concerns, is highly irritating and counterproductive. Down with the nanny state.”

— Felix Dennis

26. “I love the business of business; I love the risk raking.”

— Felix Dennis

27. “Unless you are completely retired, earning money is the best form of wealth preservation.”

— Felix Dennis

28. “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

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

— Felix Dennis

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

— Felix Dennis

31. “I’m an entrepreneur, a businessman. I’ve got a lot of money, and that doesn’t go very well with the whole ‘starving artist in a garret’ routine.”

— Felix Dennis

32. “If the influence of luck is a delusion, then all I can say is that the delusion is virtually universal.”

— Felix Dennis

33. “The age of celebrity editors and monstrous staffing are over.”

— Felix Dennis

34. “The beginnings of a forest is one of the ugliest things on the planet. It’s bleak and your neighbours hate you.”

— Felix Dennis

35. “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

36. “Native trees are so important to our ecosystem.”

— Felix Dennis

37. “I cannot abide being bored.”

— Felix Dennis

38. “I have an over-attachment to precision, which is why I’ve sold more magazines than any man alive.”

— Felix Dennis

39. “Human beings are definitely changing the planet, but how much impact they are having on climate, I don’t know and I don’t care.”

— Felix Dennis

40. “For me, temptation is life and I have a gargantuan appetite for everything.”

— Felix Dennis

41. “Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.’ The.”

— Felix Dennis

42. “Be bold. Be brave. Don’t thank your lucky stars. The stars can’t hear you.”

— Felix Dennis

43. “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

44. “You do not need to be clever. You do not even need to be that adept. You need only a little cunning and massive determination to become rich. Providing you can pay much cleverer but risk-averse people properly, and promote them and lead them in such a way that they are all rowing in the same direction, they will sign on to your little ship.”

— Felix Dennis

45. “I never sue journalists. I employ journalists. I employ too many of them. I don’t sue journalists.”

— Felix Dennis

46. “Never, never, never, never hand over a single share of anything you have acquired or created if you can help it. Nothing. Not one share. To no one. No matter what the reason – unless you genuinely have to. Do.”

— Felix Dennis

47. “After a lifetime of making money and observing better men and women than I fall by the wayside, I am convinced that fear of failing in the eyes of the world is the single biggest impediment to amassing wealth. Trust me on this.”

— Felix Dennis

48. “When enough people share a short-lived delusion, vast sums of money can be acquired overnight.”

— Felix Dennis

49. “Just imagine getting rich while you’re helping others to help you get richer and prove their worth in the process. Magic! It.”

— Felix Dennis

50. “Simple. There are many clever, cunning and adept people who are risk averse. You are not risk averse because you are dedicated to becoming rich.”

— Felix Dennis