American author & advertising executive (1886-1967)
It is easy to become so engrossed with the mere mechanics of business as to lose the habit of thought.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
Your body may live in a cellar; but it's your own fault if your mind lives there.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
To choose the sure thing is treason to the soul.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
The Man Nobody Knew
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
The Man Nobody Knew
To every man of vision the clear Voice speaks; there is no great leadership where there is not a mystic.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
The Man Nobody Knew
A man may be down, but he is never out.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
slogan written for the Salvation Army
The world would not have advanced very far had it not been for the contributions of its dreamers. It would never have gained its steamboat, nor its Atlantic cable, nor its wireless telegraph, nor its electric light. It would never have acquired any really great enterprise. For a little enterprise may be rustled and worried into being: but a really great program or movement or business must be dreamed.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
Most of us do not have incomes large enough to provide both the things we need and the things we want. We are forced to choose between our necessities and our luxuries. And, very foolishly, we choose to offer up the luxuries. Thus our existence becomes dull and monotonous. We can hardly be said really to live: our lives are lived for us--cut out and sewed together by the habits and customs of the class to which we belong.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
Every year, by cutting out a few foolish necessities, I buy myself one big, wise luxury.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
The majority of famous men are not taken unawares by fame. On the wall of their minds hangs their own vision of what they ought to be and can be. They are not surprised by success when it comes; because they have seen it coming, and planned out its coming, in their dreams.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
There are too many King Midases loose in the world. They do not have the Midas touch: they have the Midas look. They see nothing but money.... The universe, to them, is a balance-sheet: their minds are adding-machines: their hearts beat in tune with the ticker.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
Get money--but stop once in a while to figure what it is costing you to get it. No man gets it without giving something in return.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
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
BBDO newsletter, 1966
I have established a very good rule, which I pass on to you: Never do anything just because other people do it.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
The cave-man who first piled stones together into a rude hut did it to provide a shelter for his most precious possession, the sacred fire. There is a sacred fire that burns in every real home; an altar to restfulness and forbearance and love. The man who can claim that altar, whether the shelter built about it be a mansion or only a single room, he it is who owns his own home.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
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
The Man Nobody Knows
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
It's a Good Old World
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside themselves was superior to circumstance.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
The Man Nobody Knew
Most of the work of carrying on the world is necessarily hard and dull and routine in character: and for it the world needs us men and women who can steel our souls against weariness and monotony, and press forward with good cheer.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
I had never thought of advertising as a life work, though I had on the side, written some very successful copy.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
attributed, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators