These are some of our favorite advertising quotes. Some of the quotations are about advertising in general and some are witty quotes by great advertising icons like David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett.
Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
~Samuel Johnson
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
~ Abraham Lincoln

Our society’s values are being corrupted by advertising’s insistence on the equation: Youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness.
~John Fisher
The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
~Rene Descartes
Advertisers in general bear a large part of the responsibility for the deep feelings of inadequacy that drive women to psychiatrists, pills, or the bottle.
~Marya Mannes
Advertising says to people, “Here’s what we’ve got. Here’s what it will do for you. Here’s how to get it.”
~ Leo Burnett
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
~George Orwell
Advertising is only another form of statistics.
~Hartman Jule
The most truthful part of a newspaper is the advertisements.
~Thomas Jefferson
The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.
~Leonard Bernstein
If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn’t have to advertise them.
~ Will Rogers
The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.
~Unknown
Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
~ Stephen Leacock
Advertising is the art of making whole lies out of half truths.
~Edgar A. Shoaff
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents
~ George Orwell
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
~Mark Twain
So long as there’s a jingle in your head, television isn’t free.
~Jason Love
Advertising is the art of making whole lies out of half truths.
~Edgar A. Shoaff
Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose… the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.
~David Ogilvy
Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned.
~J.B. Priestley
Buy me and you will overcome the anxieties I have just reminded you of”
~Michael Schudson
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts — for support rather than for illumination.
~Andrew Lang
Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.
~Will Rogers
A viewer who skips the advertising is the moral equivalent of a shoplifter.
~Nicholas Johnson
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity
~George Carlin
You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.
~ Joseph E. Levine
The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.
~Bill Cosby
I do not read advertisements – I would spend all my time wanting things
~Franz Kafka
If people aren’t going to talk about your product, then it’s not good enough.
~Jeffrey Kalmikoff
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
~George Carlin
Advertising is a bit like playing make-believe.
~Hartman Jule
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
~ Stephen Leacock
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
~Abraham Lincoln
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
~David Ogilvy
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
~George Orwell
Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.
~ Will Rogers
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
~John Lahr
I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad
~Leo Burnett
The best ad is a good product.
~ Alan H. Meyer
Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
~ Bill Cosby
I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes…
~Philip Dusenberry
Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.
~David Ogilvy
If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
- David Ogilvy
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In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal.
~ Bill Bernback
Advertising – a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.
~ Northrop Frye
Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.
~ J. K. Galbraith
Advertising is on its deathbed and it will not survive long, having contracted a fatal case of new technology.”
~Roland T. Rust and Richard W. Olive
Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film. They advertise memories.
~ Theodore Parker
I believe that superior creative work always has been, is, and always will be the hub of the wheel in any successful agency
~Leo Burnett
Ads become information when they’re in context.
~Steve Larsen
Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
~ Lily Tomlin
Young people are threatened . . . by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire
~Pope John Paul II
Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
~David Ogilvy
Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
~ Leo Burnett
A magazine is simply a device to induce people to read advertising.
~James Collins
Advertisers constantly invent cures to which there is no disease.
~Author Unknown
You can add your own quotes about Advertising below.
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