“In an age as agitated as ours, it no longer suffices just to be advertised in the newspaper. To be advertised in this way is the same thing as being consigned to oblivion. If one is to be noticed, once must as least appear on the first page under a hand that points to and, as it were, announces or advertises the advertisement.”

“It may be true that one can reach more microcomputer users with advertising. If this is really so, a business which advertises the service of copying and mailing GNU for a fee ought to be successful enough to pay for its advertising and more. This way, only the users who benefit from the advertising pay for it.
On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends, and such companies don't succeed, this will show that advertising was not really necessary to spread GNU. Why is it that free market advocates don't want to let the free market decide this?”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

“There is no question that advertising is an art, and manipulation is the art of advertising through the medium of the tape.”

Edwin Lefèvre book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

“I'm just an advertisement for a version of myself.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

“Consumerism is the worship of the god of quantity; advertising is its liturgy. Advertising is schooling in false longing.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

“A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. … The first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

“These men traveling down to the City in the morning, reading their newspapers or staring at advertisements above the opposite seats, they have no doubt of who they are. Inscribe on the placard in place of the advertisement for corn-plasters, Elliot's lines: We are the hollow men”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

“The hired journalist, I thought, ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business – advertising either goods, or a cause, or a government. He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain, and what he wants to advertise.”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

“One young lady asserted that she had never looked at any of the cards in the cars in which she had been riding for years. When questioned further, it appeared that she knew by heart almost every advertisement appearing on the line (Chicago and Evanston line), and that the goods advertised had won her highest esteem. She was not aware of the fact that she had been studying the advertisements, and flatly resented the suggestion that she had been influenced by them. Some of the goods advertised were known to her only by these advertisements, yet she supposed that they had nothing to do with her esteem of the goods. She supposed that she had always known them, that they were used in her home, or that they had been recommended to her. She did not remember when she had first heard of them.”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

“Do you believe it! Do you believe that the King of glory is present, and has been since 1874?… Behold, the King reigns! you are his publicity agents. Therefore advertise, advertise, advertise, the King and his kingdom.”

Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869–1942) American judge