Bruce Barton

When you can dump a load of bricks on a corner lot, and let me watch them arrange themselves into a house – when you can empty a handful of springs and wheels and screws on my desk, and let me see them gather themselves together into a watch – it will be easier for me to believe that all these thousands of worlds could have been created, balanced, and set to moving in their separate orbits, all without any directing intelligence at all.

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.

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.

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.