John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream.

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

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

Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.

I'll tell you what I probably would prefer to happen less and less: actors that I know and respect in shampoo ads. Or modeling.

With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?

You live in the city and all the time there are signs telling you what to do and billboards trying to sell you something.

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.

If somebody ever says something is a mature theme, it's bound to not be. I mean, you shouldn't fall for that. You can make it sound mature, but anything that's about being mature is pretty immature.

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.

I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.

I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could. Advertising.

… a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

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.

Consumerist ads brainwash us into individualist and egotistic self-love.

There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.

I formulated the theme behind 'The Grand Illusion' album after observing how American culture creates illusions through advertising and entertainment to convince us that our lives our lacking, in order to sell products.

We buy into all kinds of lies that are sold to us from advertising to Fox news or from the Vatican to Goldman Sachs.

Commercialism in the Western world has got us by the scruff of the neck. It's a technological takeover, and we can't even see it happening because we're too busy enjoying it.

I don't like ads. I don't like selling things. That's not me.

No, I most certainly do not think advertising people are wonderful. I think they are horrible, and the worst menace to mankind, next to war; perhaps ahead of war. They stand for the material viewpoint, for the importance of possessions, of desire, of envy, of greed. And war comes from these things.

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

The greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever sold