Bruce Fairchild Barton Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

Before you give up hope, turn back and read the attacks that were made on Lincoln.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
I had never thought of advertising as a life work, though I had on the side, written some very successful copy.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
Every time you open your mouth you let men look into your mind.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
I do not like the phrase: Never cross a bridge till you come to it. The world is owned by men who cross bridges on their imaginations miles and miles in advance of the procession.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
The essential element in personal magnetism is a consuming sincerity - an overwhelming faith in the importance of the work one has to do.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
If you can give your son only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
The ablest men in all walks of modern life are men of faith. Most of them have much more faith than they themselves realize.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
The Bible rose to the place it now occupies because it deserved to rise to that place, and not because God sent anybody with a box of tricks to prove its divine authority.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
The faults of advertising are only those common to all human institutions. If advertising speaks to a thousand in order to influence one, so does the church. And if it encourages people to live beyond their means, so does matrimony. Good times, bad times, there will always be advertising. In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times they have to.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
Give advertising time. That is the thing that it needs most. The advertising agency is the most precious infant among the professions. Is it fair to expect perfection in a profession that counts only a single generation to its credit? We are learning. I see no reason why advertising agencies, too, should not outlive their founders and the successors of their founders, growing wiser with each generation and gathering a priceless possession of recorded experience.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world. The first four words ever uttered, Let there be light, constitute its charter. All nature is vibrant with its impulse.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
[Christ] would be a national advertiser today, I am sure, as He was a great advertiser in His own day. He thought of His life as business.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
Surely no one will consider us lacking in reverence if we say that every one of the "principles of modern salesmanship" on which business men so much pride themselves, are brilliantly exemplified in Jesus' talk and work.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
Generalities would have been soon forgotten. But the story that had its roots in everyday human existence and need, lives and will live forever. It condensed the philosophy of Christianity into half a dozen unforgettable paragraphs. The parable of the Good Samaritan is the greatest advertisement of all times.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
To every man of vision the clear Voice speaks; there is no great leadership where there is not a mystic. Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside themselves was superior to circumstance. To choose the sure thing is treason to the soul.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
There are two seas in Palestine. One is fresh, and fish are in it. Splashes of green adorn its banks. Trees spread their branches over it and stretch out their thirsty roots to sip of its healing waters... The Sea of Galilee receives but does not keep the Jordan. For every drop that flows into it another drop flows out. The giving and receiving go on in equal measure. The other sea is shrewder, hoarding its income jealously. It will not be tempted into any generous impulse. Every drop it gets, it keeps. The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. The other sea gives nothing. It is named The Dead. There are two kinds of people in the world. There are two seas in Palestine.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
The American conception of advertising is to arouse desires and stimulate wants, to make people dissatisfied with the old and out-of-date and by constant iteration to send them out to work harder to get the latest model—whether that model be an icebox or a rug or a new home.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
Advertising did not invent the products or services which called forth jobs, nor inspire the pioneering courage that built factories and machinery to produce them. What advertising did was to stimulate ambition and desire - the craving to process, which is the strongest incentive to produce. To satisfy this craving the factory was impelled to turn itself into a growing factory; and then, by the pressure of mass demand, into many factories. Mass production made possible mass economies, reflected in declining prices, until the product that began as the luxury of the rich became the possession of every family that was willing to work.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world, it will come through the expression of your own personality—that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
Advertising is of the very essence of democracy. An election goes on every minute of the business day across the counters of hundreds of thousands of stores and shops where the customers state their preferences and determine which manufacturer and which product shall be the leader today, and which shall lead tomorrow.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
It is said that great leaders are born, not made. The saying is true to this degree, that no man can persuade people to do what he wants them to do, unless he genuinely likes people, and believes that what he wants them to do is to their own advantage.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
Learn their lesson, that if you would teach people you first must capture their interest with news; that your service rather than your sermons must be your claim upon their attention; that what you say must be simple, and brief, and above all sincere — the unmistakable voice of true regard and affection.

Bruce Fairchild Barton
Much brass has been sounded and many cymbals tinkled in the name of advertising; but the advertisements which persuade people to act are written by men who have an abiding respect for the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sincerity regarding the merits of the goods they have to sell.

Bruce Fairchild Barton