Advertisements Quotes

• You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

  Norman Douglas

  Business, Advertising, Nigeria Independence

  SouthWind ch. 7 (1917)

  15 Copy quote

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• The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Motivational, Truth, Humorous

  47 Copy quote

• Ralph Lauren has always stood for providing quality products, creating worlds and inviting people to take part in our dream. We were the innovators of lifestyle advertisements that tell a story and the first to create stores that encourage customers to participate in that lifestyle.

  Ralph Lauren

  Dream, Fashion, Encouragement

  52 Copy quote

• If we define pornography as any message from any communication medium that is intended to arouse sexual excitement, then it is clear that most advertisements are covertly pornographic.

  Philip Slater

  Communication, Messages, Excitement

  11 Copy quote

• Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

  George Santayana

  Religion, Advertising, Argument

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

  18 Copy quote

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• The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.

  Bill Cosby

  Funny, Humor, Law

  30 Copy quote

• A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

  David Ogilvy

  Business, Drawing, Attention

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  84 Copy quote

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• Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.

  David Ogilvy

  Business, Design, Television

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  9 Copy quote

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• I did not feel 'evil' when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.

  David Ogilvy

  Country, Years, Evil

  63 Copy quote

• It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.

  David Ogilvy

  Eye, Men, Magazines

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  10 Copy quote

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• Some manufacturers illustrate their advertisements with abstract paintings. I would only do this if I wished to conceal from the reader what I was advertising.

  David Ogilvy

  Abstract Painting, Advertising, Reader

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

  7 Copy quote

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• If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly.

  Michael Schudson

  Silly, People, Culture

  Michael Schudson (2013). “Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion (RLE Advertising): Its Dubious Impact on American Society”, p.242, Routledge

  16 Copy quote

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• Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned.

  J. B. Priestley

  Age, Advertising, Perfect Life

  13 Copy quote

• I hope I never get so hard up I have to do advertisements. I've gotten ridiculous offers.

  Tracey Ullman

  Ridiculous, Advertising Agencies, Offers

  7 Copy quote

• The question about those aromatic advertisements that perfume companies are having stitched into magazines these days is this: under the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, is smelling up the place a constitutionally protected form of expression?

  Calvin Trillin

  Expression, Magazines, Firsts

  7 Copy quote

• There's a subterranean impetus towards pornography so powerful that half the business world is juiced by the sort of half sex that one finds in advertisements.

  Norman Mailer

  Sex, Powerful, Business

  Norman Mailer (1966). “Cannibals and Christians”, Dell, 1967

  11 Copy quote

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• The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Community, States, Newspapers

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

  7 Copy quote

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• We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready - even eager - to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Knowing, Desire, Advertising

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.232, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

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• I'm not a very good advertisement for the American school system.

  David Brinkley

  School, Very Good, Advertising Agencies

  7 Copy quote

• A store's best advertisement is the service its goods render, for upon such service rest the future, the good-will, of an organization.

  James Cash Penney

  Organization, Economy, Stores

  7 Copy quote

• I am always looking for a cool tee shirt; maybe one with a rock band or an old advertisement.

  Bridget Hall

  Rocks, Band, Shirts

  7 Copy quote

• Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Vocabulary, Mind, Mastery

  Spectator 19 Nov. 1937 "The Psychology of Advertising"

  36 Copy quote

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• I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.

  Franz Kafka

  Want, Advertising, My Time

  43 Copy quote

• Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

  Stephen Leacock

  Money, Fear, Animal Intelligence

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.29, University of Toronto Press

  31 Copy quote

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• As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

  George Orwell

  Christian, Political, Advertising

  The Road toWigan Pier ch. 11 (1937)

  20 Copy quote

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