Quotes collected by Bob Steele, Seattle-based freelance copywriter and branding advisor. Over the years, I’ve read thousands of great quotes. Many have come from the legends of business and advertising. Here are what I consider the most insightful and valuable quotes. They’re listed in alphabetical order using the author’s last name.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: 
If you can’t explain it in simple terms, then you don’t understand it. —Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist

A brand is the face of a business strategy. —Quoted by David Aaker, brand strategist

If advertising had a little more respect for the public, the public would have a lot more respect for advertising. —James Randolph Adams, co-founder, McManus, John & Adams, Inc.

For a brand to be successful it must stand for something different, and this difference must be relevant to its users. Most important, this difference and relevance must be simple to understand. —Allen Adamson, author and former managing director, Landor Associates, New York

A brand is a promise. It’s a promise between a company and a consumer that a product or service will perform exactly the way consumers expect it will…Branding is how the brand’s promise is conveyed. —Allen Adamson, author and managing director, Landor Associates, New York

Simple sticky ideas drive brand success. —Allen Adamson, author and managing director, Landor Associates, New York

Companies with an edge know that every point of touch with a customer is an opportunity to deliver on the brand promise. —Allen Adamson, author and managing director, Landor Associates, New York

If you don’t believe what you’re doing is good, why should anyone else believe it? —Herb Albert, musician and bandleader

You want to find your own voice, and it takes a while. —Herb Albert, musician and bandleader

If you like something, I don’t think you hear it with your ears. You hear it with your soul. —Herb Albert, musician and bandleader

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing. —Muhammad Ali, professional boxer and activist

Logic can convince, but only emotion can motivate. —Jonathan Alter, writer/columnist

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. —Maya Angelou, poet, author and activist

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. —Maya Angelou, poet, author and activist

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. —Maya Angelou, poet, author and activist

If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be. —Maya Angelou, poet, author and activist

The fool tells me his reasons. The wise man persuades me with my own. —Anonymous but often attributed to Aristotle, Greek philosopher

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. —Aristotle

…The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. —Aristotle, Poetics 

I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares. —Saul Bass, graphic designer and filmmaker

Unless you have absolute clarity of what your brand stands for, everything else is irrelevant. —Mark Baynes, global CMO, Kellogg. Co.

Create the possible service; don’t just create what the market needs or wants. Create what it would love. —Harry Beckwith, author

Good advertising builds sales. But great advertising builds factories. —Bill Bernbach, co-founder, Doyle Dane Bernbach

The most powerful element in advertising is the truth. —Bill Bernbach, co-founder, Doyle Dane Bernbach

If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you and some against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you, and nobody for you. —Bill Bernbach, co-founder, Doyle Dane Bernbach

Getting your product known isn’t the answer. Getting it WANTED is the answer. —Bill Bernbach, co-founder, Doyle Dane Bernbach

Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make. —Bill Bernbach, co-founder, Doyle Dane Bernbach

You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen. —Bill Bernbach, co-founder, Doyle Dane Bernbach

Advertising is fundamentally persuasion, and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art. —Bill Bernbach, co-founder, Doyle Dane Bernbach 

At the heart of an effective creative philosophy is the belief that nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him. —Bill Bernbach, co-founder, Doyle Dane Bernbach

Advertising is not about being clever; it’s about finding a truth that connects the product to the user. —Wayne Best, creative director, Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners

Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. —Jeff Bezos, founder, Amazon.com

Your brand is formed primarily not by what your company says about itself, but what the company does. —Jeff Bezos, founder, Amazon.co

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well. —Jeff Bezos, founder, Amazon.com

The common question that gets asked in business is, “Why?” That’s a good question. But an equally valid question is, “Why not?” —Jeff Bezos, founder, Amazon.com

We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. —Jeff Bezos, founder, Amazon.com

What’s dangerous is not to evolve. —Jeff Bezos, founder, Amazon.com

You don’t choose your passions. Your passions choose you. —Jeff Bezos, founder, Amazon.com

In the end, we are our choices. —Jeff Bezos, founder, Amazon.com

Build brands not around products but around reputation. —Richard Branson, founder, Virgin Group

First come the innovators, then come the imitators, then come the idiots. —Warren Buffett, investor, philanthropist, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. —Warren Buffett, investor, philanthropist, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. —Warren Buffett, investor, philanthropist, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett Company

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever. But in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain’t got nothing. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

The work of an advertising agency is warmly and immediately human. It deals with human needs, wants, dreams and hopes. Its “product” cannot be turned out on an assembly line. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

If you don’t get noticed, you don’t have anything. You just have to be noticed. But the art is in getting noticed naturally without screaming or without tricks. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won‘t come up with a handful of mud either. —Leo Burnett, founder, Leo Burnett

Unlike a computer, the brain is highly fallible when it comes to storing voluminous amounts of information, but it is without parallel in grasping the total meaning of the information with which it is presented. —Jeremy Campbell, author of Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life

People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do. —Lewis Cass, early American military officer, politician and statesman

In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different. —Coco Chanel, founder, House of Chanel

Some people think that luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity. —Coco Chanel, founder, House of Chanel

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever…Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time, a tremendous whack. —Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, historian and Nobel Prize-winning author

Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. —Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, historian and Nobel Prize-winning author

Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it’s not liable to ever happen. More often than not, work is salvation. —Chuck Close, painter

The facts of the matter are rarely the heart of the matter. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

Most ads barely communicate one message well. Let’s not push our luck with two. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

Often, the more you say the less you’re heard. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

In the end, an ad with many messages has one message: Ignore me. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

Being better is the best way to be different. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

The art of compromise includes knowing when not to. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

If your single most persuasive idea takes more than one sentence to explain, it probably isn’t single. Or persuasive. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

Great ads solve advertising problems. Great agencies solve business problems. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

Ads need two things: A reason to pay attention and a reason to be glad attention was paid. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

Before you decree a standard for others, make sure you can meet it yourself. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

A brand doesn’t need a unique position in the market as much as a unique position in consumers’ minds. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

If you’re not promoting a truth, you’re accelerating a failure. —Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

Agencies ask their clients, “What do you really want to say?” That’s the wrong question. They should be asking, “What do your consumers want to hear?” The issue is how to build a communications bridge between the brand and the consumer, connecting with the soul of the consumer so that they can live vicariously through the advertising.—Lee Clow, chairman, TBWA Chiat/Day

Highly creative people are focused on the task, not on themselves. They’re asking, how can I solve this problem?, and not, What will solving this problem do for me? Trying to push creative people doesn’t work. They aren’t pushed, they’re driven. —Geoff Colvin, author and senior editor-at-large, Fortune

Our job—if I can see straight and hear clearly and understand—is to make advertising and run advertising that is seen and read and heard—and remembered—for its reasonable and compelling truth. —Fairfax Cone, co-founder, Foote, Cone & Belding

A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is. It is what consumers tell each other it is. —Scott Cook, co-founder, Intuit

A brand is nothing more than a story wrapped around a product or service…The reason we consistently refer to a small handful of brands is because they’re the ones that have got their stories straight. —Richard Cordiner, planning director, Leo Burnett

When we sell a bottle of Havana Club [rum] in France, in England, or in Chile, we not only sell the liquid, we sell the soul of the country. —Jerome Cottin-Bizonne, Cuban Director, Pernod Ricard

There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world—one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love…That one thing is trust. —Stephen M.R. Covey, American writer and public speaker

The most important ingredient in marketing is to stake out a unique claim that differentiates your brand from everybody else’s brand. —Rance Crain, editor-in-chief, Advertising Age, and Al Ries, chairman and co-founder, Ries & Ries

Although we think that decision-making about brands depends strongly on functional benefits, it all comes down to one question: How will this make me feel? —Kim Cramer and Alexander Koene, BR-ND

There is no future for products everybody likes a little, only for products somebody likes a lot. —Laurel Cutler, VP consumer affairs, Chrysler Corporation

Emotions are an essential part of our thinking ability and not just something extra that mucks up our thinking. —Edward de Bono, author and authority on conceptual thinking

Most people believe facts that fit their beliefs. —Donny Deutsche, American advertising executive and TV personality

Consumers don’t remember a day later where they got their information from. —Donny Deutsche, American advertising executive and TV personality

To be a person is to have a story to tell. —Isak Dinesen, pen name for Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke, Danish author best known for Out of Africa

 Make it simple, but significant. —Don Draper line from Mad Men TV Series

Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. —Don Draper line from Mad Men TV Series

The purpose of a business is to create a customer. —Peter Drucker, management consultant 

Business. That’s easily defined. It’s other people’s money. —Peter Drucker, management consultant

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said. —Peter Drucker, management consultant 

The aim of marketing in to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. —Peter Drucker, management consultant

My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions. —Peter Drucker, management consultant

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. —Peter Drucker, management consultant

There are only two things in a business that make money—innovation and marketing. Everything else is cost. —Peter Drucker, management consultant

I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes… —Phil Dusenberry, chairman, BBDO

Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design. —Charles Eames, architect and graphic designer

Most films make the unspoken assumption that their characters are defined by and limited to their plots. But lives are not about stories. Stories are about lives. That’s the difference between films for children and films for adults. —Roger Ebert, American film critic, screenwriter and author

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. —Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. —Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there will ever be to know and understand. —Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. —Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
—Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. —Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

It is never too late to be what you could have been. —George Eliot (pen name for Mary Ann Evans), writer

It’s not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them. —T.S. Eliot, poet

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, lecturer, philosopher and poet

When someone talks about an “elegant solution to a chess problem,” there’s the strong implication of beautiful simplicity. That’s true in advertising. Elegant advertising is distinguished by simplicity—and the simplicity makes it effective. —Gene Federico, co-founder, Lord, Geller, Federico, Einstein

If an ad isn’t seen, it can’t be read. And if it isn’t seen and read, it won’t be believed, and it won’t be acted upon. So I begin with the problem of visibility, of working to strip away the nonessentials so that the effect is concentrated and the message stands out in the environment of the medium. —Gene Federico, co-founder, Lord, Geller, Federico, Einstein

If you can’t explain it in simple terms, then you don’t understand it. —Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist

If I asked people what they wanted, they’d say a faster horse. —Henry Ford, founder, Ford Motor Company

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. —Henry Ford, founder, Ford Motor Company

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. —Henry Ford, founder, Ford Motor Company

How do I know what I think until I see what I say? —E.M. Forster, writer

Successful brands have a very clear and powerful story, or proposition. —Jez Frampton, global chief executive officer, Interbran

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. —Benjamin Franklin, U.S. Founding Father, author, printer, scientist, inventor, and statesman

Standing for something isn’t just about writing it down. It’s about believing it and living it. —Jason Fried, author, co-founder and CEO, Basecamp

Great brands are the ones that tell the best stories. Sure, good products and service matter, but stories are what connect people with companies. —Jason Fried, author, co-founder and CEO, Basecamp

All companies have customers. Lucky companies have fans. But the most fortunate companies have audiences. —Jason Fried, author, co-founder and CEO, Basecamp

It’s the stuff you leave out that matters. So constantly look for things to remove, simplify, and streamline. Be a curator. Stick to what’s truly essential. —Jason Fried, author, co-founder and CEO, Basecamp

“Simple” is a tricky word, it can mean a lot of things. To us, it just means clear. That doesn’t always mean total reduction, or minimalism. Sometimes to make things clearer, you have to add a step. —Jason Fried, author, co-founder and CEO, Basecamp

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. —Erich Fromm, German-born American psychologist, philosopher and author

You have to hit 'em where their heart is. You can sell far more if you're emotional rather than intellectual. Take Polaroid. They don't sell cameras, they sell love. People take pictures of people they love. Some companies get so wrapped up in the technology of the things they make that they forget they have to sell those things to people. —Bob Gage, Doyle Dane Bernbach's first art director

The value of a brand is that it reduces uncertainty. That provides a lot of value for people. You know what you’re getting with a particular brand, and without that reassurance, brands would otherwise be worthless. —Jeff Galak, associate professor of marketing, Carnegie Mellon University

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. —Mahatma Gandhi, Indian spiritual/political leader and humanitarian

If you don’t know where you’re going, any direction will get you there. —Lou Gerstner, CEO, IBM

A logo is the point of entry to the brand. —Milton Glaser, designer

What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer, artist, scientist and statesman

The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo. —Seth Godin, writer and marketing lecturer

When you’re happy at work, you’re engaged in deep play. —Quoted by John Grisham, author

I’m always looking for that compelling two- or three-sentence plot…Okay, listen to me, I have an idea and I have to pitch it. It’s like pitching a TV show or pitching a movie idea. I’ve got to pitch the story…Yeah, and it better be short—two or three sentences… —John Grisham, author

In the world of business, only the paranoid survive. —Andy Grove, CEO, Intel

A brand promise needs to meet three criteria. First, it needs to be relevant; second, credible, and third, differentiated. —Dr. Alexander Haldemann, chief executive officer, MetaDesign

Brands are arguably the key assets that a company possesses and they should therefore be a top priority for senior management and not seen as something left solely to the marketing department. They represent the embodiment of a company’s differentiation and positioning.  —Chris Halliburton, professor of international marketing, ESCP Europe

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic. —Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction writer

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. —Hans Hofmann, German-born American abstract expressionist

Human nature has a tendency to admire complexity but reward simplicity. —Ben Huh, internet entrepreneur and CEO of the Cheezburger Network

Consumers do not view communications in isolation. They bring with them all their past brand experience and associations. —Josh Hunt, associate director, The Futures Company

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you cannot get them across, your ideas will not get you anywhere. —Lee Iacocca, automobile executive at the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Corporation

Emotions are a critical piece of learning. Always. Meaningful learning, learning that really matters to you, that changes who you are and that endures over time, always has an emotional component. —Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, neuroscientist, University of Southern California

The thing is, it’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better. —Jony Ive, senior vice president of design, Apple

Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. —William James, philosopher, psychologist and physician

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. —Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States

The most successful brands show customers what their businesses stand for by communicating that truth in everything they do. —Bernadette Jiwa, author and brand storyteller

Creativity is just connecting things. —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Apple

Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Apple

…It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Apple

Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page. —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Apple

You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and then try to figure out where you’re going to sell it. —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Appl

Most people make the mistake of thinking that design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer—that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good.’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Apple

Strategy is figuring out what not to do. —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Apple

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world? —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Apple

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused. —Samuel Johnson, writer/lexicographer, 1759

It has become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises. —Samuel Johnsosn, writer/lexicographer, 1759

Promise, large Promise, is the soul of an Advertisement. —Samuel Johnson, writer/lexicographer, 1759

Our most creative ideas don’t tend to come when we’re consciously focused on the problem. Great insights come through interacting with people, gaining experiences and letting your mind make connections. —Scott Barry Kaufman, American psychologist, author and science writer

The best way to predict the future is to create it. —Alan Kay, computer scientist and president, Viewpoints Research Institute

Point of view is worth 80 IQ points. —Alan Kay, computer scientist and president, Viewpoints Research Institute

People don’t care what you know until they know that you care. —Jack Kemp, former U.S. congressman, Secretary of Housing, and professional football quarterback

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. —Anthony Kennedy, former U.S. Supreme Court justice

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones. —John Maynard Keynes, British economist and mathematician

Our job is to wake up the consumers. If we become predictable, that’s not waking them up. —Phil Knight, founder, Nike

I try to write an ad so it sounds as if I’m talking to somebody—talking to one person. A friend. An intelligent friend. Telling her what I want her to know about the product. I try to be very specific, very informative, and very interesting. Because I know you can’t bore people into a store. —Reva Korda, creative head, Ogilvy & Mather

Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. —Philip Kotler, author and professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers. You must delight them. —Philip Kotler, author and professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

There is no such thing as a commodity. It is simply a product waiting to be differentiated. —Philip Kotler, author and professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

The best advertising is done by satisfied customers. —Philip Kotler, author and professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

There is only one winning strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market. —Philip Kotler, author and professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Good companies will meet needs; great companies will create markets. —Philip Kotler, author and professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you are not a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything, and the low cost producer is the only winner. —Philip Kotler, author and professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

The sales department isn’t the whole company, but the whole company better be the sales department. —Philip Kotler, author and professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Either you care or you don’t. —Stanley Kubrick, filmmaker

Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind. —Walter Landor, co-founder, Landor Associates

Brand essence stems from our observation that the most successful campaigns—campaigns that are successful for the client and the agency—have two things in common. They have the rational message right. But when they succeed, they also have the emotional message right. People aren’t stupid. They don’t buy without reason. But they also want products and services they like. Likeability isn’t just important. It’s critical. —Ron Lawner, chief creative officer, Arnold Communications

The best advertising should make you nervous about what you’re not buying. There’s too much smart-ass advertising today and not enough that emotionally moves consumers to go out and buy something. —Mary Wells Lawrence, co-founder, Wells Rich Greene

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. —Elmore Leonard, author

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole. —Theodore Levitt, professor, Harvard Business School

A brand is more than a trademark. It is a trustmark. A brand is a covenant between the company and the consumer. A trusted brand is a genuine asset. —Larry Light, US brand consultant

You do not build a brand by saying how cheap you are. You do build brand value by reinforcing how special you are. —Larry Light, US brand consultant

Creativity is not created, it is there for us to find—it is an act of discovery. —George Lois, art director, designer, author and co-founder of Papert Koenig Lois

Great work must be presented to the person that has the power to accept your creations. —George Lois, art director, designer, author and co-founder of Papert Koenig Lois

If you can’t express your thinking concisely and surprisingly—and literally communicate it visually in a nanosecond—it’s not a Big Idea. —George Lois, art director, designer, author and co-founder of Papert Koenig Lois

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. —Vince Lombardi, former head coach, Green Bay Packers

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. —Vince Lombardi, former head coach, Green Bay Packer

Just a tip of advice. Never write on both sides of the sheet when you are sending a letter to a busy man. —Jack London, writer, 1913

What we see depends mainly on what we look for. —Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, banker, politician, scientist, and philanthropist

You can teach a monkey to write the body copy for an ad. But I can’t teach anybody to think. Writing has to be in touch with humanity. There has to be a humanness to it, something that reaches people. —Ed McCabe, co-founder, Scali, McCabe, Sloves

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century. —Marshall McLuhan, writer and lecturer about mass media

Perhaps the most salient factor for the most successful brands is the promise of consistent quality. —Rosi McMurray, executive director of strategy, The Brand Union

Advertising, to be successful, must be truthful or it ceases to be read or believed, and at that point, it ceases to be advertising. —William A. Marsteller, chairman, Marsteller Inc.

I think the Greeks had it right. Character is all. Character is destiny. —Jon Meacham, writer and historian

I hate to say it, but we’re all selling commodity. I’m really proud of our food, and I know chefs would be furious if they heard me say that any of what we sell is a commodity, but let’s face it; What you’re going to come back for—or not—is how we make you feel. —Danny Meyer, founder, Shake Shack

You have to be authentic. People are really hip to stuff that’s authentic versus inauthentic. —Seth Meyers, writer, comedian, and actor

Branding is deliberate differentiation. —Debbie Millman, Chair and Cofounder, Masters Program in Branding, School of Visual Arts

o not confuse motion with progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress. —Alfred A. Montapert, American author of The Supreme Philosophy of Man: The Laws of Life

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. —Alfred A. Montapert, American author of The Supreme Philosophy of Man: The Laws of Life

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions. —Alfred A. Montapert, American author of The Supreme Philosophy of Man: The Laws of Life

The future of branding is marketing with people not at them. —John Michael Morgan, author and president, Brand Against the Machine

Branding is not just about being seen as better than the competition. It’s about being seen as the only solution to your audience’s problem. —John Michael Morgan, author and president, Brand Against the Machin

Creativity requires human thought, spontaneous intuition, and a lot of courage. —Akio Morita, co-founder, Sony Corporation

When you look at a strong brand, you see a promise. —Jim Mullen, founder, Mullen Advertising

Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture. —Iris Murdoch, British novelist and philosopher

You need to be constantly reinventing. You need to challenge things. You need to try different ideas, different technologies, different creative approaches. Because the world is changing. —Miles Nadal, founder, MDC Partners

The key to engaging and inspiring consumers today is to make a brand stand for something bigger than its products, to make it share a cultural relativity that connects on a deeper level. —Sharon Napier, CEO, Partners + Napier

A leader is a dealer in hope. —Napoleon Bonaparte, French monarch, political and military leader

No one has ever found an advertising solution by talking. But thousands of brilliant solutions are discovered by listening, by hearing what people have to say. Clients can give you the answer, if you can listen and hear. It’s not a matter of simply giving the client what he or she asks for. That’s not listening, it’s regurgitation. You have to listen, to hear, then take what you’ve learned and turn it into advertising that’s bright and fresh and new. —Hal Newsom, former president and creative director, Cole & Weber

We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. —Anais Nin, writer

Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image. —David Ogilvy, co-founder, Ogilvy & Mather

You cannot bore people into buying. —David Ogilvy, co-founder, Ogilvy & Mather

Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits. —David Ogilvy, co-founder, Ogilvy & Mather

Committees can criticize advertisements, but they cannot create them. —David Ogilvy, co-founder, Ogilvy & Mather

Unless your campaign is based on a Big Idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.—David Ogilvy, co-founder, Ogilvy & Mather

Compromise has no place in advertising. Whatever you do, go the whole hog. —David Ogilvy, co-founder, Ogilvy & Mather

Top brands are universal in what they represent. Some of us have never interacted with the Red Cross, yet we perfectly know what it stands for and how it changes people’s lives across the world. We are able to recognize its logo anywhere. —Andra Oprisan, strategist, Saffron Consultants

When I sign off my television newscasts by saying ‘See you on the radio,’ it’s my way of saying that radio is like television, but with better pictures. —Charles Osgood, CBS News

[Speaking of Fairfax Cone] A magnificent teacher. His prime lesson: write to a single individual, not the hypothetical masses…Fax believed writers had to step back from their work, and look at it through the eyes of a consumer. —John O’Toole, president, Foote, Cone & Belding

When executing advertising, it’s best to think of yourself as an uninvited guest in the living room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly. —John O’Toole, president, Foote, Cone & Belding

Almost all successful brands begin by being very simple. A brand doesn’t start out by saying “I’m going to sell lots of things to lots of people in lots of ways in lots of places.” It beings by selling one thing to a few people and ensures that it’s different and better in a meaningful way. —Stewart Owen, chief strategy officer, McGarry Bowen

One simple way to assess the impact of any organization is to answer the question: How is the world different because it existed? —Samuel J. Palmisano, former president, CEO and Chairman, IBM

Stories also create value. If you take a simple object and build a story around it, the value increases exponentially. People shop with their heads and their hearts, and they will pay for a object based on how much it means to them. —Richelle Parham, CMO, Ebay

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of. —Blaise Pascal, mathematician/philosopher

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. —Linus Pauling, scientist, author and peace activist

Never in human history has more information been available to more people. But it’s also true that never in history has more bad information been available. And once it’s online, it’s news forever. —Scott Pelley, CBS evening news anchor and managing editor

Art is the lie that tells the truth. —Pablo Picasso, artist

My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso. —Pablo Picasso, artist

If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself. —Ferdinand Porche, automotive engineer/designer, and founder of the Porche car company

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. —Michael Porter, professor at Harvard Business School and author of 18 books on business and strategy

What I’ve come to see as probably my greatest gift is the ability to take an extraordinarily complex, integrated, multidimensional problem and get arms around it conceptually in a way that helps, that informs and empowers practitioners to actually do things. —Michael Porter, professor at Harvard Business School and author of 18 books on business and strategy

Innovation is rarely about a big idea; more usually it’s about a series of small ideas brought together in a new and better way. —Richard Powell, founder and director, Seymourpowell

The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes. —Marcel Proust, author, A la recherché du temps perdu (translated as Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time)

The problem of the artist is to defamiliarize the ordinary. —Paul Rand, designer and author of A Designer’s Art

Simplicity is the essence of unforgettable advertising…The essence of positioning is sacrifice—deciding what’s unimportant, what can be cut away and left behind; reducing your perspective to a very sharp point of view.—Keith Reinhard, Chairman, CEO and creative leader, DDB Needham

You have to separate your brand from all the others. “FIJI Water. Untouched by man until you drink it.” Unless it has true value, it won’t work. Intrinsic value. You need a unique selling proposition. You need to be able to communicate the thing about your brand, service or product that’s different in a very easy way. “Good to the last drop.” Since 1903. It resonates with people. —Lynda Resnick, American businesswoman behind FIJI Water and POM Wonderful

In the factories we make perfume, but in the stores we sell hope. —Charles Revson, pioneering cosmetics industry businessman and philanthropist

I still believe that the core of our industry remains the same as it was decades ago: ideas. —Waqar Riaz, strategist, Rapp London

The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind. —Al Ries, co-author of Positioning—The Battle For Your Mind and co-founder, Ries & Ries

A brand become stronger when you narrow the focus. —Al Ries and Laura Ries, co-authors of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better. —Al Ries, co-author of Positioning—The Battle For Your Mind and co-founder, Ries & Ries

What’s a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect. —Al Ries, co-author of Positioning—The Battle For Your Mind and co-founder, Ries & Ries

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. —Al Ries, co-author of Positioning—The Battle For Your Mind and co-founder, Ries & Ries

Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. —Al Ries, co-author of Positioning—The Battle For Your Mind and co-founder, Ries & Ries

I don’t know where solutions come from. I just keep thinking about the problem, turning it over in my mind, letting my subconscious work on it. Sometimes, something happens. Sometimes, it’s good. Hal Riney, founder and creative leader of Hal Riney & Partners

The essence of a great brand is sacrifice. What’s the one thing you can say, the single, simple message you can send about your brand you know people will care about? Is it dry happy babies, security away from home, soft skin, a car that will keep your family safe? Sacrifice everything else and tell this simple story. —Ken Roman, former chairman and CEO, Ogilvy & Mather

Creativity doesn’t create something out of nothing. It uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, skills, and ideas…So the object is not something new, but a new combination of existing elements. —Ken Roman, former chairman and CEO, Ogilvy & Mather

Successful concepts are not complicated. They are relevant and easy to understand. The best advertising ideas are frequently marketing ideas that are built into products. —Ken Roman, former chairman and CEO, Ogilvy & Mather

Successful concepts are not complicated. They are relevant and easy to understand. The best advertising ideas are frequently marketing ideas that are built into products. —Ken Roman, former chairman and CEO, Ogilvy & Mather

Everybody that I know who is any good at anything works harder than you ever imagine that they work. —Charlie Rose, TV talk show host and journalist

Asking the right questions is 95 percent of getting the right answers. —Charlie Rose, TV talk show host and journalist

If it’s not quite perfect for me today, there is tomorrow. —Charlie Rose, TV talk show host and journalist

Information is not knowledge. You can mass-produce raw data and incredible quantities of facts and figures. You cannot mass-produce knowledge, which is created by individual minds, drawing on individual experience, separating the significant from the irrelevant, making value judgments. —Theodore Roszak, university professor and author

Advertising is still about the art and science of persuasion…and, I would add now, participation. —Randall Rothenberg, president/CEO, IAB

The best brands are built on great stories. —Ian Rowden, chief marketing officer, Virgin Group

If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. —Russian Proverb

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. –Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and pioneering aviator

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. —Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and pioneering aviator

Fashion fades, style is eternal. —Yves Saint Laurent, French fashion designer

People take in information through the prism of the thought they already have. So if you’re vastly conservative, you hear everything through that prism. If you’re vastly liberal, you hear everything through that prism. And very few people are open to hearing new information and having it actually change their minds…That is the human brain. —Dr. Gail Saltz, psychiatrist

The most brilliant people I have known have the rare ability to distill complexity to an essence. —Mark Schaefer, author

It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds. —Paula Scher, graphic designer, painter and art educator

Every two days, we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. —Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Alphabet Inc. and former CEO, Google

Advertising [is] one of the most fundamental ways to sort out information. And that’s the gift of advertising—to connect with people in a human way—to make the kind of emotional connections that are at the core of storytelling. —Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Alphabet Inc. and former CEO, Google

Customers must understand that you stand for something. —Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks

We determined very early on that people’s interaction with the Starbucks experience was going to determine the success of the brand. —Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks

If people feel they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand. —Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks

Whatever your culture, your values, your guiding principles, you have to take steps to inculcate them in the organization early in its life so that they can guide every decision, every hire, every strategic objective you set. —Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks

We have no patent on anything we do and anything we do can be copied by anyone else. But you can’t copy the heart and the soul and the conscience of the company. —Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks

Don’t be afraid to dream because it can happen. —Vin Scully, Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster

Characters don’t exist in a vacuum; they are defined by their relationships. —The Second City Almanac of Improvisation

Apple didn’t describe the original iPod as a 6.5-ounce music player with a five-gigabyte drive. It simply said, “1,000 songs in your pocket.” This is the way human beings communicate, so this is the way Apple communicates. —Ken Segall, ad agency creative director for NeXT and Apple

Human-speak is a hallmark of Simplicity. It’s the recognition that the best way to connect with people is to put things in human terms and use the words that people use in everyday conversation. —Ken Segall, writer and ad agency creative director for NeXT and Apple

If there is one focus at Apple that transcends all others, it’s the customer experience. The goal is to give the customer a consistently great experience throughout their entire relationship with Apple. From TV ad and website to shopping to unboxing to everyday use to repair and support, Apple aims to consistently deliver the same values and speak in the same tone. —Ken Segall, ad agency creative director for NeXT and Apple

You’ve got to establish an atmosphere of trust. Trust is the coin of the realm…Mean what you say, and carry out what you say you’re going to carry out. Then people will trust you.
—George Shultz, former U.S. secretary of state

What I really like to do is have people think, to challenge people. We put the dots out there and you connect the dots. You participate in the advertising. That’s what we like to do. —Rich Silverstein, co-founder, Goodby, Silverstein and Partners

Whoever tells the best story wins. —Annette Simmons, storyteller and author of several books about stories

People don’t want more information. They are up to their eyeballs in information. They want faith—faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell. It is faith that moves mountains, not facts…Once people make your story, their story, you have tapped into the powerful force of faith. —Annette Simmons, storyteller and author of several books about stories

People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe. —Simon Sinek, author and speaker

Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent. —Joe Sparano, graphic designer, Oxide Design Company

You know more than you think you do. —Dr. Benjamin Spock, author of Baby and Child Care

Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet. —Kevin Stirtz, author and strategy manager, Thomson Reuters

The secret to success in business, and in life, is to serve others. Put others first in all you do. —Kevin Stirtz, author and strategy manager, Thomson Reuters

Focus your business on what you do best. Let everyone else worry about the rest. —Kevin Stirtz, author and strategy manager, Thomson Reuters

The best ideas in the world will accomplish nothing if you leave them on paper. Talk about them. Debate, discuss, argue. Put them into action. Then you can change the world. —Kevin Stirtz, author and strategy manager, Thomson Reuters

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought. —Albert Szent-Gyorgi, biochemist and Nobel laureate

You have to stay true to your heritage; that’s what your brand is about. —Alice Temperley, British fashion designer, founder, Temperley London

It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak and another to hear. —Henry David Thoreau, philosopher and writer

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. — Henry David Thoreau, philosopher and writer

Don’t hire a master to paint you a masterpiece and then assign a roomful of schoolboy-artists to look over his shoulder and suggest improvements. —Robert Townsend, CEO, Avis

The brand promise is the most important part of a brand’s design. A brand must promise a relevant, compelling, and differentiated benefit to the target customer…The benefit may be functional, emotional, experiential, or self-expressive. —Brad VanAuken, founder and president, BrandForward, Inc.

Branding is the concept of imbuing organizations and their products and services with human qualities and identities so that they can stand for something, share values with their customers, make promises to their customers, create emotional bonds with their customers, and generally add value beyond the product or service itself. —Brad VanAuken, founder and president, BrandForward, Inc.

Success is talent set on fire by courage. —Henry Van Dyke, American author, educator and clergyman

Elegance is refusal. —Diana Vreeland, editor-in-chief, Vogue Magazine, 1963-1971

Great work doesn’t sell. It makes you believe. So great work to me connects on not just a rational level, which is important, but work that really connects on an emotional level…Make me feel something…It has to be engaging enough that I can’t turn away from it. —Matt Walker, creative director, WHITE64

Good writing does not mean fancy writing. It means clean, clear, considerate writing. —David Foster Wallace, American novelist

I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I'm not sure which half. —John Wanamaker, founder, Wanamaker's Department Store

When a customer enters my store, forget about me. He is king. John Wanamaker, founder, Wanamaker's Department Store

Good design is good business. —Thomas J. Watson, Jr., former chairman and CEO, IBM

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it. —Thomas J. Watson, Jr., former chairman and CEO, IBM

Create your own visual style…Let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others. —Orson Welles, actor, director, writer and producer

A sale is a series of yesses. —Alan Weiss, author

One thing I try to do is know everything that is possible to know about a brand when I work on it. When you dig deep into a brand, really do a big archaeology on it, you find out why it was created in the first place, why they named it what they did, what the dreams of the founders were… This helps you discover the truth, and when you can build creative work around some kind of truth, it’s much more powerful and substantial. —Jeff Weiss, creative director, Amster Yard

Advertising is not about being clever; it’s about finding a truth that connects the product to the user. —Wayne West, creative director, Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners

A high and uniform level of quality in visual communications imparts to the customer that the same degree of care and control is given to each of the company’s products and services. —Alina Wheeler, brand advisor and author of Designing Brand Identity

If you can get people to stop thinking about making ads and to start thinking about making pieces of communication, then something fresh is about to arrive. —Dan Wieden, co-founder, Wieden + Kennedy

To be great, you have to have the confidence to be who you are and express yourself in a way that is authentic to you. You stick to your values. If you are not willing to do that, you might be financially successful. You might gain short-term value. But you are never going to become iconic. You are never going to make the transition from successful to timeless. —Steve Wilhite, former vice president of global marketing communications, Apple

We should all try to listen with the same intensity we have when we are talking. —Richard Saul Wurman, author, architect and creator of the TED conference (Ted Talks)

A weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England. —Richard Saul Wurman, author, architect and creator of the TED conference

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. —William Butler Yeats, Irish poet

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