Seth Godin Quotes

Good advertising can make people buy your product even if it sucks ... A dollar spent on brainwashing is more cost-effective than a dollar spent on product improvement.

We know the product is going to stink. We know that because we live in the world, and we know that everything stinks. We all believe, Hey, maybe this one wont stink. We are a hopeful species. Stupid but hopeful. But were happy in that moment between the commercial and the purchase. And I think spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy.

Of course, the toxic bullshit of incessant advertising and show biz for nearly a century has stripped us of cognitive abilities for dealing with reality that used to be part of the normal equipment of adulthood - for instance, knowing the difference between wishing for stuff and making stuff happen. We bamboozled ourselves with too much magic.

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.

Film is a window to the real world but a lie that makes you believe the unbelievable.

Perception is not always reality.

Give the public the 'image' of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality.

Photographs are interpretations of reality; as such, it is entirely subjective. Most photos are taken with an agenda, to sell something or to make a subject look better than it really is. Think of family snapshots - everyone is smiling and happy.

Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.

I think the mistake that people make often times is you just lose touch of reality and you have to never be afraid to call someone's bullshit or call someone's bluff when something doesn't make sense.

The Senate was holding hearings on deceptive sweepstakes practices. These companies target the elderly, making them think they're going to get a bunch of money, when in reality they never see any of it. The most popular of these scams is called Social Security.

Thinking that everything is going to come together in a perfect way is not necessarily the way it's going to happen.

The language of salesmanship was no doubt born with the first fashions in fig leaves in the garden of Eden. A strange concept has grown around it: if something is to be sold, inaccuracy is not immoral. Hence the art of advertisement - untruthfulness combined with repetition.

There are so many things that can take over your life: money, alcohol, drugs - even fashion. People hand you things, and you start to believe life is easy. And it's not like that - you're not supposed to be the person you play in the movies.

Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.

Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.

Illusion never changed into something real.

I think, in some ways, Michael Jackson is out of touch with reality, and I don't think he has people around him who can say, Michael, can't do this. Michael, you can't do that. Michael, you can't say this. You know, I think he has been so big for so long that he can do whatever he wants to do.

The lack of insight to reality, life and history as well as into God's ways, or sunan in His creation, some people will continue to seek or demand the impossible. They will imagine what does not or cannot happen, misunderstand occurrences and events, and interpret them on the basis of cherished illusions which in no way reflect God's sunan or the essence of Islamic law.

If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.

The advertising industry is one of our most basic forms of communication and, allegedly, of information. Yet, obviously, much of this ostensible information is not purveyed to inform but to manipulate and to achieve a result - to make somebody think he needs something that very possibly he doesn't need, or to make him think one version of something is better than another version when the ground for such a belief really doesn't exist.

Facts mean nothing when they are preempted by appearance. Do not underestimate the power of impression over reality.

Reality is what you can get away with.

I think what democracy means today, in reality, is to a large extent, manipulated consent - not forced consent, manipulated consent - and manipulated more and more with the help of Madison Avenue.