Robert Smith Surtees Quotes

Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies

I like having to figure out how to pull things off, how to sell it, how to make it look real, but not just real, make it look better.

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.

It takes great salesmanship to convince a customer to buy something from you that isn't built or isn't finished.

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

If you're shameless enough, you can sell anything.

There's a fine line between marketing and grand theft.

a salesman is an it that stinks to please but whether to please itself or someone else makes no more difference than if it sells hate condoms education snakeoil vac uumcleaners terror strawberries democ ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair

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.

I think a smart woman can sell the average man anything.

Note to the wise: whenever someone insists that he wants to buy something from you, but tells you there's no real value in it yet, two things are happening: he's lying, and you're being taken.

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.

...in seduction, as in all forms of marketing, form superseds content.

It's easier to force feed people than it is to give 'em what they want. It makes more money.

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

When a man is trying to sell you something, don't imagine that he is polite all the time.

Selling cookies helped me to realize that you needed to have a certain way to communicate with people. You also needed business skills. You knew you needed to sell a certain amount of boxes, so that gave me some business sense.

This isn't really a convention, This is really an infomercial. And every night we'll have a different infomercial and people view it with a certain level of cynicism.

If you've ever had somebody try to sell you something - people who can sell, they really are not manipulating you. They are selling themselves.

Those who tell us to be in touch with our own desires are often merely trying to make us believe that what we want is the thing that they are selling. […] We're used to that kind of persuasion, for political candidates as well as commercial products.

The marketing of anything is full of exploitation and lies and hype.

Madison Avenue makes us addicts of consumerism, using glass wampum to steal our capacity to direct our own lives.

I had a job once selling encyclopedias, and that was an interesting job because I learned a lot about people's vulnerabilities and how salesmen take advantage of them.

If people know they're being sold to, you can celebrate the sell.

The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer.