“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”

The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.

First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

Leaders grasp nettles.

The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.

Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

Political advertising ought to be stopped. It’s the only really dishonest kind of advertising that’s left. It’s totally dishonest.

It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.

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

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.

We have a planetary emergency. We have to find a way to create, in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.

Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.

I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you’re working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn’t dream of interrupting on the golf course.

I like to make something beautiful when I run … it’s style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, ‘I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.’ It’s more than just a race, it’s a style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.

I like to feel the butterflies in the stomach, I like to go home and have a restless night and wonder how I’m going to be able to accomplish this feat, get jittery. That hunger and those butterflies in the stomach are very essential for all creative people.