David Ogilvy

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.

I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.

A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member’s talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

We have had just one main purpose during these years, and that is to give the people transportation of the most dependable quality at the lowest possible cost. Our car was called the Universal Car thirty years ago, because it fulfilled so many needs; it is The Universal Car today for the same reason.

I was never involved in arms trading. In the Russian Federation, arms trading is the prerogative of the state.

You don’t learn to walk by following rules, you learn by doing and by falling over.

Two classes of people lose money; those who are too weak to guard what they have; those who win money by trick. They both lose in the end.

I quickly figured out [that] the one ability I’d better have is to create relationships.

I have no Napoleonic dream. I’m just hard-working and pragmatic.

Nations are great as they are prosperous as they are industrious as they are just.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.

I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world.

You have an idea of the way you think it is, and it’s not that way at all, it’s something else.

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

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

Only a fool never changes his mind.

I myself never make any notes. Usually, if I write something down, I can’t read it afterwards.