“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.”

Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.

Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.

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.

I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.

You now have to decide what ‘image’ you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.

What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.

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.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

The seeds you plant in the hearts and minds of others will be what you receive in return – 100-fold. Only sow that which you wish to receive in return. Sow good, receive good! Plant seeds daily in your Mary Kay business and your Mary Kay business will return to you.

I have always been focused on my job. No profession allows you the luxury of being half-focused. If you’re not into it, you’re not there. And the film industry is all the more harsh in these cases, perhaps because it’s a business of the limelight.

The man who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won’t succeed, you must have a larger ambition.

We are coming to see that there should be no stifling of labor by capital, or of capital by labor; and also that there should be no stifling of labor by labor, or of capital by capital.

Money is a way of keeping COUNT on how well you’re doing in business.

The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.

I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.