David Ogilvy

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

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

I always said that mega-mergers were for megalomaniacs.

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.

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

A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.

While I love technology and social media, a text or a tweet can never replace the real value of conversation.

A world where men ran half our homes and women ran half our institutions would be just a much better world.

Competition is the lifeblood of industry.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

In New York and Los Angeles, you can throw your car keys to the valet and he parks it. Same in Hong Kong and Singapore, the service is off the scale. In London it’s sub-standard to abysmal.

London has got better as it’s become more international – you only have to look at the quality of the restaurants to see how improved it’s become.

I really don’t retain information – by the time I arrive wherever I’m going, I already forget what it is that I wanted to say.

No business can succeed in any great degree without being properly organized.

The best way to make money in business is not to think too much about making it.

I think everybody thought I was crazy that I quit my job and started a management company in which I was managing one client – Laura Nyro.

I foresee the time when industry shall no longer denude the forests which require generations to mature, nor use up the mines which were ages in making, but shall draw its raw material largely from the annual produce of the fields. I am convinced that we shall be able to get out of yearly crops most of the basic materials which we now get from forest and mine.

An imitation may be quite successful in its own way, but imitation can never be Success. Success is a first-hand creation.

If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.

I have a great, great company. I employ thousands of people. And I’m very proud of the job I did.

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.