“After a slow buildup, people become convinced that they have known about the brand forever.”

Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things.

Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better.

The Law of the Generic: One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name.

Marketing is not selling. Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect.

It normally takes decades to build a brand because it takes decades to penetrate the gray matter in between your ears.

Successful brands get into the mind slowly. A blurb in a magazine. A mention in a newspaper. A comment from a friend. A display in a retail store.

You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.

What’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand’s in trouble.

Each year we send more and receive less.

The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.

What should a brand leader advertise?

Advertising is the way great brands get to be great brands.

It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.

It creates in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no product on the market quite like your product.

Even if all the cattle on the range look pretty much alike.

If I had known I would influence so many guitarists, I would have practiced more.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew whatever it was that I was looking for was real.

You can never really know what a guru is as long as you are imprisoned by your own thoughts and circular ego.

Chanting just hits you and you want to be a part of it. That’s the point of this whole thing. That’s what cuts through all the ‘stuff’. You get lit up. You don’t have to know what it means.

If you have a guru, leave him; if you don’t have, get one. In other words, keep changing your gurus! Ocean’s wisdom comes from knowing many ships and many fishes, many storms and many waves!

For one who knows me, I am one with him; for one who wants to know me, I am very near to him; and for one who does not know me, I am a beggar before him.

The truths that I know best I have learned on my knees. I never know a thing well, till it is burned into my heart by prayer.

I knew that if I did not start chanting with people, that I would never be able to clean out the dark corners of my own heart. I knew it with every cell in my body and mind.