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" The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. And I really believe that. And what I try to teach young people, or anybody in any creative field, is that every idea should seemingly be outrageous. "

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" When I did 'Esquire,' I did a lot of celebrity covers, but the celebrity cover was Hubert Humphrey as a dummy, sitting on Lyndon Johnson's lap and aping his feelings about the war. I did celebrity covers that made a difference in what was going on in American culture. "

George Lois

War

Going

Culture

" When you think of a brand, you should immediately understand it from the advertising attitude, from the words and visuals. "

" In professional work - certainly in the arts and graphics - 99% of people have zero courage. They blow with the wind. "

" You don't create a magazine for your readers. You don't take a poll, you know, like the politicians do, and find out what they're thinking and what they want... You're supposed to be telling people what the hell you think is exciting and dynamic and thought-provoking, and do it - and do it your way. "

" I've done truth to power all my life. It's got me into trouble, but who cares? "

" What Apple did for technology is brilliant, but they didn't do nothin' for our economy. "

" From the time I was three or four years old, I drew all the time. Drew all the time, every second. "

" When I teach classes at the School of Visual Arts,, I'll ask the students, 'How many of you have been to a museum this year?' Nobody raises their hand and I go into a tirade. If you want to do something sharp and innovative, you have to know what went on before. "

" Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people's mediocrities. That's precisely what 'trends' are - a search for something 'safe' - and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion. "

" What I taught myself was that in any problem you get, you've got to come up with an innovative, brilliant, kind of unusual, stunning solution. "

George Lois

Problem

Solution

" I may have destroyed world culture, but MTV wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for me. "

George Lois

Culture

May

" If you think people are dumb, you'll spend a lifetime doing dumb work. "

" Ad agencies do all kinds of market research that ask people what they think they want, and instead, you should be creating things that you want. If you do something and you get it, the rest of the world will get it, too. Trust your own instincts, your own intellect, and your own sense of humor. "

" I don't design. I get what I think is a big idea, and I put the idea down. I'm not a designer. I'm a communicator. "

" Great advertising, in and of itself, becomes a benefit of the product. "

" Nothing great can come of more than three people in a room. If you had 10 incredibly bright people, nothing would come out of it. "

George Lois

People

Great

" When I lecture kids, I say, 'You've got to be ambitious by the advertising' - ambitious. You've got to say, 'See, this product? Maybe I can change the world with this product.' They look at me like I'm nuts, but that's what you can do. "

" The 1960s was a heroic age in the history of the art of communication - the audacious movers and shakers of those times bear no resemblance to the cast of characters in 'Mad Men.' "

" These days, no celebrity on a magazine cover, including Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, or Leonardo DiCaprio, could possibly match the visual punch of Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, grinning boy, goofily peeking out at us on the newsstand. "

George Lois

Boy

Celebrity

" My concern has always been with creating images that catch people's eyes, penetrate their minds, warm their hearts and cause them to act. "

" Whatever the creative industry, when you're confronted with the challenge of coming up with a Big Idea, always work with the most talented, innovative mind available. Hopefully... that's you. "

" If you work with convictions, people have got to listen to you. "

" People say I'm the original Don Draper. I'm not Don Draper. "

" The computer has played a role in destroying creativity with the Photoshop. Everybody thinks they're a designer. "

" The whole area of creativity is constipated and frightened. "

" All the people who run agencies, all the important people in agencies have taken communication courses, marketing courses, advertising courses, and courses basically teach advertising as a science, and advertising is so far from a science it isn't even funny. Advertising is an art. "

" Museums are custodians of epiphanies, and these epiphanies enter the central nervous system and deep recesses of the mind. "

" There's no such thing as a cautious creative. "

" Nobody should force you to do a bad piece of work in your whole life - no client, no creative director, nobody. The job isn't to please the client; the job is to produce something for the client that makes them incredibly successful. "

" Everybody is so busy talking about 'Twittering' and talking about the new technologies and talking about this and that, but they don't talk about creativity. "