I've never met a client who wants to be the worst.

No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.

I think people are getting bored of parties, and hosts are terrified nobody's going to show up. So they have to start entertaining them before the party even starts.

The French are simply incapable of telling the truth.

Nobody can write a good 30-second commercial.

Humor works, and it's the best way to get attention without spending a lot of money.

I am a temporary amusement.

Most of the people in advertising now - mention Bill Bernbach to them, they don't know.

My day is spent hiding from people.

Today's merger makers are not ad people; they're building communications companies.

The Democrats are going the way of Burma Shave and Crisco - products everyone loved and had in their homes. But they got old. They didn't have anything new to say about the product, and after awhile, they died.

Sad to say, negative advertising really works.

Husbands and wives fight, and when the wife is packing up, the husband says, 'Don't leave! I'm gonna change!' Marriages stay together because people promise to change.

There's something that goes on in a new-business meeting that's wonderful to watch. It's like showtime. There are people who are nervous, and there are people who are jittery, and there's so much drama and so much at stake.

I gotta be involved. I still write ads; I still run around and rally the creative people.

Every automobile ad looks alike.

As long as the attitude is to only show the sheet metal, then automobile advertising will continue to be wretched.

Once people feel comfortable with something, they say, 'Let's try it.'

If people ever talked the way advertising sounded, they would be put away.

I ran for political office in the Hamptons once in a war I was having with the village. I came in, there were four people running, and I came in around third. It was over my food market - they arrested me. I just wanted to go for office because I thought it would be an interesting to do.

I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I'm a great believer that you can't have too conservative a President nor too liberal a Supreme Court. So I'm a walking contradiction. I believe that you should try to really protect people's rights in every way, and also, people should be allowed to do what they do.

Advertising is what I do. It's got me everything I have, and I'm not going to leave it.

I don't like to work for politicians because I hate to work on anything that you can't give back if it doesn't work. I sell products. I do a commercial for, say, Meow Mix, and you don't like it, you get your money back. You can return it. Politicians, you can't return. You're with them for four more years. And that's scary.

In the '50s and '60s, a family's first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising.