Top 118 Quotes & Sayings by Felix Dennis - Page 2

Obviously, waste disposal is an enormous and fantastic industry.

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.

The planet doesn't require saving, and actually hasn't asked Greenpeace to save it.

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

Poetry is one of the oldest of all art forms, and one of its powers for shamans and tribal leaders was the mnemonic.

False praise is worse than no praise.

You can collect all the plastic bottle caps you want as long as you give me the money so we can get off this death trap, find somewhere else and have tremendous fun screwing that up as well.

I'm so suspicious of our own understanding of the past. I just think that your mind plays absolute tricks on you and fools you every minute of every day. And so when you're talking about the past, you're talking about something that never happened. At least it didn't happen the way you think it happened.

Posthumous reputations have little to do with real lives.

You can actually be bored stiff while you're dying.

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

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.

I should have liked to get married, but over many decades I have lived essentially alone. I go to sleep when I'm tired, get up when I wake up, have my food prepared when I'm hungry. I can't bear the thought that I'd have to coincide, make an effort.

I've always noted with some awe the reading habits of the Australian public. Australians read more newspapers and magazines per head of population than almost any other country in the world.

In the end, the railroads made America and nanotech will make the 21st century, and that is the end of the story. The beginning of the story and the end of the story.

People really do not have time to read all the newspapers in the world and all the sites that we now commonly use on the web. There is no possibility of keeping up.

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?

When you're writing, you're in a totally different zone... I can start a difficult poem and look up at the clock and see to my astonishment that three hours have passed.

Everything I publish is for my readers.

I hear poets complaining: 'We face what our forebears did not face. We face TV. We face radio. We face this and that.'

The problem with rich lists is... it is impossible to know what someone is worth until they have died and you have sold it.

When I see something that's wrong, I just speak and act first and I'll take the consequences later.

America is not the center of the universe.

The climate has been changing since there was a climate.

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

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

The key to successful business is self belief and application.

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.

Sometimes, to ensure that a talented individual will work for you, or will stay working with you, you need to be flexible. Money is not always the great motivator here. Talented people want a good salary, of course, but surprisingly often they are more attracted to new opportunities and challenges.

When I was young I wanted to be the greatest blues singer of all time. I wrecked my education and left home for it.

Overhead will eat you alive if not constantly viewed as a parasite to be exterminated. Never mind the bleating of those you employ. Hold out until mutiny is imminent before employing even a single additional member of staff. More start-ups are wrecked by overstaffing than by any other cause, bar failure to monitor cash flow.

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.

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

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.

Poetry forces a writer to condense and crystallise his thoughts and often represents a short cut to truths unsuspected by the author himself.

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

People who grow rich almost always improve their sex life. More people want to have sex with them. That's just the way human beings work. Money is power. Power is an aphrodisiac. Money did not make me happy. But it definitely improved my sex life.

Talent is indispensable, although it is 'always' replaceable. Just remember the simple rules concerning talent: Identify It, Hire It, Nurture It, Reward It, Protect It. And when the time comes, Fire It.

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.

Anyone not busy learning is busy dying.

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

Teamwork is the glue which binds losers together

For a start, the salary begins to have an attraction and addictiveness all of its own. A regular paycheck and crack cocaine have that in common. In addition, and more to the point, working too long for other people can blunt your desire to take risks. This last factor is crucial, because the ability to live with and embrace risk is what sets apart the financial winners and losers in the world.

The bottom line is that if I did it, you can do it. I got rich without the benefit of a college education or a penny of capital but making many errors along the way. I went from being a pauper.. a hippie dropout on the dole, living in a crummy room without the proverbial pot to piss in, without even the money to pay the rent, without a clue as to what to do next.. to being rich...

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

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.

It's very difficult to be continuously charitable in a capitalistic society. You've also got to make sure that you can pay everyone who works for you.

Few things in life are certain except death and being taxed.

I've been busy for years, buying land, often under pseudonyms, and planting trees on it. All the money is going into it when I die.. and in the end I'd like to think that it will be 20 to 30,000 acres.

Great Expectations [book by Charles Dickens] has been described as "Dickens's harshest indictment of society." Which it is. After all, it's about money. About not having enough money; about the fever of the getting of money; about having too much money; about the taint of money.

Ideas don't make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.

Whosoever plants a tree, Winks at immortality.

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

Money is color-blind, race-blind, sex-blind, degree-blind, and couldn't care less who brought you up or in what circumstances.

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

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

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

You have an advantage that neither education nor upbringing can buy - you have almost nothing. And therefore you have almost nothing to lose.