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" 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. "

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" A truly great magazine cover surprises, even shocks, and connects in a nano-second. "

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

" You can't test great advertising. You can only test the mediocre. Not that I don't care about demographics. You have to understand who you're going after. "

" 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. "

" Truly great images make all the other millions of images you look at unimportant. You gotta look at an image and understand it in a nanosecond. "

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

" To me, great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother. It can change your perception of something. Is it wrong to change your perception about something? Of course not. I'm not lying; I'm just saying, 'This one's more fun, this one's more exciting.' "

" 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. "

" If somebody says to you, 'MTV,' you think of Mick Jagger on a phone screaming at that phone: 'I want my MTV.' That, to me, was always the epitome of great advertising. "

" I'm sounding like an old fart talking about how bad advertising is today, but it's true. Advertising sucks. Guys like me and Bob Gage and certainly Bill Bernbach and two or three other guys, we exemplified and led the creative revolution. "

" 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. "

" I talk to all the creative directors today, and they take me aside, and they say, 'You know, it must have been great back in those days when you could do anything you wanted.' I say, 'Huh? Excuse me?' I mean, we fought. In the '60s and '70s, you fought wars with clients, and you have to continue fighting wars to do great work. "

" 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. "

" Trends can tyrannize; trends are traps. In any creative industry, the fact that others are moving in a certain direction is always proof positive, at least to me, that a new direction is the only direction. "

" 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. "

" When you create advertising, always start with the words. "

" Sometimes all the 'marketing' insight in the world can't move a client, but the creation of a truly great brand name can become a billion-dollar idea! "

" 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. "

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

" Doyle Dane Bernbach was a great, great agency when I got there. There was an arrogance that everyone had, but it was a closed club. I was a guy who worked a little differently. Edgier. More punch-in-the-mouth. "

" 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. "

" A graphic designer, you know, who understands ideas and understands that ideas are what makes the world go round, could change the world with a magazine. If one talent could do it right now, and everybody would stop saying it's the death of magazines. "

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

" With the way I worked, a client can give me everything they know about something, and then I go away and come back with advertising that knocks them out of their chair. They finally understand what kind of a company they are. "

" 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.' "

" If you're working, and you're not trying to be great, give up. "

" 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. "

Change The World

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

" 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. "

" 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. "