“In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.”
"William Dean Howells" (1983)
1980s, At Home (1988)
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Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes

“All advertising advertises advertising – no ad has its meaning alone.”
Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 145

“The art of the future will be largely advertising.”
Depero (1931) "Futurism and Adverticing Art"; Partly quoted in: Jonathon Keats, " Fortunato Depero's Italian Futurism http://www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/2009/0608/art-fortunato-depero-italian-futurism.html," forbes.com, 2009/06/08
Context: The art of the future will be largely advertising.
that bold and unimpeachable lesson I have learned from museums and great works from the past—
all art for centuries past has been marked by advertising purposes: the exaltation of the warrior, the saint; documentation of deeds, ceremonies, and historical personages depicted at their victories, with their symbols, in the regalia of command and splendor—
even their highest products were simultaneously meant to glorify something: architecture, royal palaces, thrones, drapery, halberds, standards, heraldry and arms of every sort—
there is scarcely an ancient work that doesn’t have advertising motifs, a garland with a trophy, with weapons of war and victory, all stamped with seals and the original symbols of clans, all with the self-celebrating freedom of ultra-advertising

Man in the Modern Age (1933)
Context: When the titanic apparatus of the mass-order has been consolidated, the individual has to serve it, and must from time to time combine with his fellows in order to renovate it. If he wants to make his livelihood by intellectual activity, he will find it very difficult to do this except by satisfying the needs of the many. He must give currency to something that will please the crowd. They seek satisfaction in the pleasures of the table, eroticism, self-assertion; they find no joy in life if one of these gratifications be curtailed. They also desire some means of self-knowledge. They desire to be led in such as way that they can fancy themselves leaders. Without wishing to be free, they would fain be accounted free. One who would please their taste must produce what is really average and commonplace, though not frankly styled such; must glorify or at least justify something as universally human. Whatever is beyond their understanding is uncongenial to them.
One who would influence the masses must have recourse to the art of advertisement. The clamour of puffery is to-day requisite even for an intellectual movement. The days of quiet and unpretentious activity seem over and done with. You must keep yourself in the public eye, give lectures, make speeches, arouse a sensation. Yet the mass-apparatus lacks true greatness of representation, lacks solemnity. <!-- pp. 43 - 44

As cited in: Jay Conrad Levinson (1999), Mastering Guerrilla Marketing. p. 218
Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control, 1967

“You can tell the values of a nation by its advertisements.”
South Wind (1917).