Great designers seldom make great advertising men, because they get overcome by the beauty of the picture – and forget that merchandise must be sold.
James Randolph Adams, US advertising executive (1898-1956)
When you advertise fire extinguishers, open with the fire.
David Ogilvy, US advertising executive (1911-1999)
It is not the purpose of the ad or commercial to make the reader or listener say, ‘My, what a clever ad.’ It is the purpose of advertising to make the reader or listener say, ‘I believe I’ll buy one when I’m shopping tomorrow.’
Morris Hite, US advertising guru, author (1910-1983)
We want consumers to say, ‘That’s a hell of a product’ instead of, ‘That’s a hell of an ad.’
Leo Burnett, US advertising executive (1891-1971)
The product that will not sell without advertising will not sell profitably with advertising.
Albert Lasker, US businessman, father of modern advertising (1880-1952)
Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.
Edgar Watson Howe, US editor, author, essayist (1853-1937)
The business that considers itself immune to the necessity for advertising sooner or later finds itself immune to business.
Derby Brown, US advertising executive (1883-??)
Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn’t have to advertise it.
Will Rogers, US actor, humorist (1879-1935)
The best ad is a good product.
Alan H Meyer, US academic, business author
The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.
Leo Burnett, US advertising executive (1891-1971)
The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned into prose, but that it has turned into advertising copy.
Louis Kronenberger, US critic (1904-1980)
The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our lives such a lavish use of superlatives that no standard of value whatever is intact.
Wyndham Lewis, British author, painter (1882-1957)
Advertising in the final analysis should be news. If it is not news it is worthless.
Adolph S Ochs, US newspaper publisher (1858-1935)
Asked about the power of advertising in research surveys, most agree that it works, but not on them.
Eric Clark, US advertising guru, author
I know half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.
John Wanamaker, US merchant, retail executive (1838-1922)
The value of an advertisement is in inverse ratio to the number of times it has been used.
Raymond Rubicam, US advertising executive (1892-1978)
Age
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
Sigmund Freud, Austrian founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939)
You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.
A child of five would understand this. Send somebody to fetch a child of five.
Julius Henry ‘Groucho’ Marx, US comic actor (1890-1977)
Strategies are okayed in boardrooms that even a child would say are bound to fail. The problem is, there is never a child in the boardroom.
Victor Palmieri, US executive, lawyer (b. 1930)
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter (1881-1973)
No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you’re keeping the man-child alive.
John Cassavetes, US actor, director (1929-1989)
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.
Pearl S Buck, US author (1892-1973)
I’m not young enough to know everything.
J M Barrie, British dramatist, author (1860-1937)
The ageing process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
Doug Larson, US journalist (b. 1926)
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
Henry Ford, US automobile manufacturer, engineer (1863-1947)
The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
Muhammad Ali, US heavyweight boxing champion (b. 1942)
Nothing is more dishonourable than an old man, heavy with years, who has no other evidence of his having lived long except his age.
Seneca, Roman philosopher, statesman, author (3 BC-65 AD)
There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age.
Sofia Villani Scicolone, known as Sophia Loren, Italian actress (b. 1934)
Attitude
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
William James, US philosopher, psychologist (1842-1910)
There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.
William Bennett, US federal official (b. 1943)
The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.
Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese philosopher, author, poet (1883-1931)
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.
Helen Keller, US author, lecturer (1880-1968)
Students with high hopes set themselves higher goals and know how to work hard to attain them. When you compare students of equivalent intellectual aptitude on their academic achievements, what sets them apart is hope.
Charles Richard Snyder, US sociologist (1944-2006)
People who are optimistic see a failure due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure, ascribing it to some lasting characteristic that they are helpless to change.