Top 120 Simon Cowell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Good is not enough. You’ve got to be great.”

— Simon Cowell

2. “The artists who endure are the ones who stay focused even after they have reached the top of their profession.”

— Simon Cowell

Featured in: Focus Quotes, Music Quotes

3. “Being different is good; embrace it.”

— Simon Cowell

4. “What other people think about me is none of my business .”

— Simon Cowell

5. “Work hard, be patient, and be a sponge while learning your business. Learn how to take criticism. Follow your gut instincts and don’t compromise.”

— Simon Cowell

6. “Maybe I am a bit mad.”

— Simon Cowell

7. “The best way to kill someone is from the inside, by crushing their hopes and dreams.”

— Simon Cowell

8. “I get very anti-social, depressed and irritable with people. I don’t have time for them. I can’t make phone calls and stuff. I just sit on my own for days.”

— Simon Cowell

9. “My dad did teach me a very important lesson about people when he explained to me that everybody around you will have an invisible sign on their head, which says, “Make me feel important.””

— Simon Cowell

10. “You know what the secret to weight loss is? Don’t eat much.”

— Simon Cowell

11. “I should get a dog. I would get a rescue dog. I like mutts; I don’t care. I would probably get a three-legged dog no one else would want.”

— Simon Cowell

12. “People confuse ego, lust, insecurity with true love.”

— Simon Cowell

13. “I didn’t realise how important stupid people are in your life, because you ask yourself, what made stupid people so stupid? What made them the way they are?”

— Simon Cowell

14. “That was extraordinary. Unfortunately, extraordinarily bad.”

— Simon Cowell

15. “My own saying is: ‘Create the hype, but don’t ever believe it.’”

— Simon Cowell

16. “Shave off your beard and wear a dress. You would be a great female impersonator.”

— Simon Cowell

17. “The young people working for me are ambitious and hard-working. That work ethic has always been a trait of the British.”

— Simon Cowell

18. “I like spaghetti bolognese, I like baked beans on toast. I hate French food. I hate fancy food.”

— Simon Cowell

19. “In TV, film, and music there’s a lot of snobbery, and I don’t like it. I’ve never been a cultural snob.”

— Simon Cowell

20. “When someone asks, ‘Does success make you into a monster?’ I always say, ‘No, it enables you to be a monster.’”

— Simon Cowell

21. “I break up very well. I am a good breaker-upper.”

— Simon Cowell

22. “I love TV. I love being behind the scenes on a TV show but there’s something about, I don’t know there’s something very special when you’ve signed an artist and that first record comes in and it’s a good record. It is an indescribable feeling.”

— Simon Cowell

23. “Not everybody is perfect, and I don’t think we should be looking for perfect people.”

— Simon Cowell

24. “Harshness to me is giving somebody false hopes and not following through. That’s harsh. Telling some guy or some girl who’ve got zero talent that they have zero talent actually is a kindness.”

— Simon Cowell

25. “My attitude is, if someone’s going to criticize me, tell me to my face.”

— Simon Cowell

26. “I hate belongings. I hate clutter. It really bothers me because I can’t think properly. If you’ve got distractions in front of you, your mind goes nuts.”

— Simon Cowell

27. “You don’t go into anything contemplating failure, because if you did, you wouldn’t make it.”

— Simon Cowell

28. “You don’t hate the mosquito; you just want it out of your face.”

— Simon Cowell

29. “I’ve had Botox, but then again pretty much everyone I know has. To me, Botox is no more unusual than toothpaste. It works. You do it once a year – who cares?”

— Simon Cowell

30. “You didn’t beat the compotition you crushed the compotition!”

— Simon Cowell

31. “You always want to go to a party where you get an invite.”

— Simon Cowell

32. “If I go into a relationship with an artist, which at most is going to last five years, we have a 100-page contract covering every eventuality. Whereas with marriage you go into it with no contract, with laws that date back hundreds of years, and I don’t think that’s right.”

— Simon Cowell

33. “The object of this competition is not to be mean to the losers but to find a winner. The process makes you mean because you get frustrated.”

— Simon Cowell

34. “You sounded like someone who should be singing on a cruise ship. Halfway through your song, I wished the ship was sinking.”

— Simon Cowell

35. “I don’t mind being cast as some kind of a pantomime baddie, but I am very fair in business. I always have been. I pride myself on being fair.”

— Simon Cowell

36. “Every time I sat in a chemistry lesson, I thought, ‘What am I doing this for? I don’t ever want to be in a job that involves a Bunsen burner.’”

— Simon Cowell

37. “Praise a stranger with a few nice words and he becomes a stranger that calls you a friend.”

— Simon Cowell

38. “I couldn’t think of anything worse than being in an unhappy marriage. It worries me because I’ve seen it destroy people.”

— Simon Cowell

39. “Women say hello and then put their hands down my trousers. I thought it was my hand they were supposed to shake.”

— Simon Cowell

40. “My dad said to me, ‘Work hard and be patient.’ It was the best advice he ever gave me. You have to put the hours in.”

— Simon Cowell

41. “If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning.”

— Simon Cowell

42. “My advice would be if you want to pursue a career in the music business, don’t.”

— Simon Cowell

43. “It simply works. You do it twice a year. Who cares? And it balances my smoking and drinking.”

— Simon Cowell

44. “I’d say the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done is probably bungee jumping in Thailand.”

— Simon Cowell

45. “I was so tired, wasn’t having fun any more, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this any longer. So I turned my phone off and sorted my head out. It was the opposite of a breakdown really, it was a break-up – I got rid of all the idiots, realised my job was supposed to be fun, and got on with my life.”

— Simon Cowell

Featured in: Fun Quotes

46. “You are a saucy little thing aren’t you?”

— Simon Cowell

47. “If you’ve got a big mouth and you’re controversial, you’re going to get attention.”

— Simon Cowell

48. “I don’t have sophisticated tastes. I have average tastes. If you looked in my collection of DVDs, you’d see ‘Jaws’ and ‘Star Wars.’ In the book library, you’d see John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon. And if you look in my fridge, it’s, like, children’s food – chips, milkshakes, yogurt.”

— Simon Cowell

49. “I think of stress as the creator of cancer and heart attacks, like a tiny little ball you feed. I believe that one of the reasons I’ve never got ill is that I’m not stressed.”

— Simon Cowell

50. “Britain’s got talent, enormous talent; that’s very obvious.”

— Simon Cowell