Quotes from Simon Cowell

I have always hated celebrities lecturing people on politics. So forgive me. But I am passionate about this country. I am equally passionate about the potential of the people who live here.

You know what the secret to weight loss is? Don't eat much.

If I said to most of the people who auditioned, 'Good job, awesome, well done,' it would have made me actually look and feel ridiculous. It's quite obvious most of the people who turned up for this audition were hopeless.

I think you have to judge everything based on your personal taste. And if that means being critical, so be it. I hate political correctness. I absolutely loathe it.

I'm not sure who has the right to say that you have better taste than somebody else, because essentially what you're doing is calling millions of people morons.

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.

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.

I'm not that musical. I don't really know how a record is produced, and, funnily enough, I don't want to.

Every show I've ever, you know, produced, essentially it's the show I want to watch myself.

You don't go into anything contemplating failure, because if you did, you wouldn't make it.

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.

My proudest achievement has been the success of the shows and artists I have been involved with, because they were made in Britain.

Money brings you security and choice. You can make decisions in a different way if you have a lot of money. But when you have nothing, you have a naivety, and a more fearless attitude because you have nothing to lose.

I was never given any hand-outs. I started at the bottom and was very good at finding people who knew more than me and learning from them.

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?

For the music business, social networking is brilliant. Just when you think it's doom and gloom and you have to spend millions of pounds on marketing and this and that, you have this amazing thing now called fan power. The whole world is linked through a laptop. It's amazing. And it's free. I love it. It's absolutely brilliant.

Holding auditions in front of an audience is testing.

I've learned to deal with stress much better now, things don't bother me in the way that they once used to.

When someone asks, 'Does success make you into a monster?' I always say, 'No, it enables you to be a monster.'

If I went to a psychiatrist, it would be a long session. I've always thought that I do have a number of issues that probably need dealing with, because I am quite odd in some ways.

When I look at it now, the whole punk thing is sort of comedy in a weird way.

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.

I still put punctuation in my texts. If it's an 'I', I make sure it's a capital.

I'd say the most dangerous thing I've ever done is probably bungee jumping in Thailand.