Max Amsterdam

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

They encouraged me to always look for the good in people instead of assuming the worst and trying to find fault.

No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between a man and a plot of land. With one foot in the land, human society is firmly balanced against most economic uncertainties. With a job to supply him with cash, and a plot of land to guarantee him support, the individual is doubly secure. Stocks may fail, but seedtime and harvest do not fail.

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.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

Success will always be measured by the extent to which we serve the buying public.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say 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.

Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.

The keystone of successful business is cooperation. Friction retards progress.

First and foremost, I’m a real estate person. And that’s what I love the most.

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.