Steve Albini Quotes

Advertising moves people toward goods; merchandising moves goods toward people.

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

People ultimately get what they deserve on TV. What people end up watching is what the advertising end up glomming onto and promoting.

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.

A sellout is putting your name on any piece of crap and then expecting people to buy it because it's got your name on it. That's what a sellout is to me.

We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires.

Whenever I get a tweet that's trying to promote a thing someone cares about, I'm like, "how annoying!"

Freedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements.

The faults of advertising are only those common to all human institutions. If advertising speaks to a thousand in order to influence one, so does the church. And if it encourages people to live beyond their means, so does matrimony. Good times, bad times, there will always be advertising. In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times they have to.

Promotion and perception are synonymous twins of art marketing.

The American conception of advertising is to arouse desires and stimulate wants, to make people dissatisfied with the old and out-of-date and by constant iteration to send them out to work harder to get the latest model - whether that model be an icebox or a rug or a new home.

There's always going to be merchants who need to get their message out, but things have gone way too far.

It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.

Billboards, billboards, drink this, eat that, use all manner of things, everyone, the best, the cheapest, the purest and most satisfying of all their available counterparts. Red lights flicker on every horizon, airplanes beware; cars flash by, more lights. Workers repair the gas main. Signs, signs, lights, lights, streets, streets.

Advertising is 'an evil service'.

People love advertising in particular but they hate advertising in general.

Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.

Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, - it largely increases the product.

We've been sold a concept of joy through advertising. It was somehow sold to us through a Gucci bag or something.

The 1960s was probably the first time in history that young people were recognized as a big group of consumers and as a commercial proposition for Madison Avenue. Advertising played a major role in creating the ethos of that era - the idea that, "Here it is, and you can have it now." I know that many kids thought that the ethos of the 1960s was due to their own peculiar virtues, but, in fact, it had a lot to do with the realities of the marketplace and commerce.

The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

We know that the adult in a certain sense has an attitude toward life exactly opposite to the attitude of commercials. Commercials say, 'Your longing for 3.2 beer is very important. Your longing for skin that doesn't have any wrinkles in it, that's very, very, very important.' The adult says, 'No, I've got wrinkles, so what?'

What we see is what they're trying to sell us.

You must be very patient, very persistent. The world isn't going to shower gold coins on you just because you have a good idea. You're going to have to work like crazy to bring that idea to the attention of people. They're not going to buy it unless they know about it.

The idea of being on television is to wear your T-shirt so people see it and maybe buy it.