David Riesman Quotes

I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.

The market is a place set apart where men may deceive each other.

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

There's a fine line between marketing and grand theft.

I love advertising because I love lying. I think spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy.

American culture is probably the least Christian culture that we've ever had because it is so materialistic and it's so full of lies. The whole advertising world is just, it's just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst of the instincts we have.

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.

Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.

Nothing you see on TV is real.

If you go to the supermarket and buy a package of food and look at the photo on the front, the food never looks like that inside, does it? That is a fundamental lie we are sold every day.

Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.

Dealing with ads is depressing. You don't make anyone's life better by making advertisements work better.

I wish all consumers were as gullible as advertising's biggest critics. Anyone who believes advertising is that powerful will believe almost anything.

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.

Consumers and retailers should always beware of imitators.

I think reality television has made the fashion industry and the beauty industry, any industry - frankly, just life - it has made life seem much different than it really is.

This product that was on TV was available for four easy payments of $19.95. I would like a product that was available for three easy payments and one complicated payment. We can't tell you which payment it is, but one of these payments is going to be hard. The mailman will get shot, the envelope will not seal, the stamp will be in the wrong denomination. The final payment must be made in wampum.

The advertising industry is one of our most basic forms of communication and, allegedly, of information. Yet, obviously, much of this ostensible information is not purveyed to inform but to manipulate and to achieve a result - to make somebody think he needs something that very possibly he doesn't need, or to make him think one version of something is better than another version when the ground for such a belief really doesn't exist.

Advertising is tax deductible, so we all pay for the privilege of being manipulated and controlled.

An ad that pretends to be art is – at absolute best – like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you.

I love advertising because I love lying.

The art of advertising - untruthfulness combined with repetition.

Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it. By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now , consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.

Advertising is a symbol-manipulating occupation