George Lois

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.

Only with absolute fearlessness can we slay the dragons of mediocrity that invade our gardens.

If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.

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.

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.

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

Look at the news stand, you know? I mean, it's a cacophony of famous people or people who want to be famous with blurbs all around it, and it's supposed to be, you know, that's supposed to be creativity in journalism. My God, it's unbelievable. It's shocking.

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.'

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.

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.

Advertising, an art, is constantly besieged and compromised by logicians and technocrats, the scientists of our profession who wildly miss the main point about everything we do_

If you don't burn out at the end of each day, you're a bum.