The business community wants remarkable advertising, but turns a cold shoulder to the kind of people who can produce it. That is why most advertisements are so infernally dull.... our business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.

David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote.

I can't stand callow amateurs who aren't sufficiently interested in the craft of advertising to assume the posture of students.

Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.

Most agencies run scared, most of the time. . . .Frightened people are powerless to produce good advertising. . . . If I were aclient, I would do everything in my power to emancipate my agencies from fear, even to the extent of giving them long-term contracts.

If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.