74 Useful Copywriting Quotes to Inspire You to Greatness

Following is our list of copywriting quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about content copywriting.

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Famous Copywriting Quotes

Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product. — David Ogilvy

I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes. — Phil Dusenberry

Advertising is the ability to sense, interpret... to put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper and ink. — Leo Burnett

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it. — David Ogilvy

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need. — Will Rogers

Content marketing is the intersection of storytelling and journalism. — Brian Clark

Ads are planned and written with some utterly wrong conception. They are written to please the seller. The interests of the buyer are forgotten. — Claude C. Hopkins

Advertising is legalized lying. — H. G. [Herbert George] Wells

Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don`t need, with money they don`t have, in order to impress others who don`t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today. — Victor Papanek

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. — James A. Michener

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. - David Ogilvy

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. — David Ogilvy

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read your headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. — Brian Clark

Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read. — Leo Burnett

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. — Samuel Johnson

You may not be good at hand-to-hand sales, but you may be a really good writer. — Naval Ravikant

Short Copywriting Quotes

  • Creativity can solve almost any problem. — George Lois
  • If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them. — Harvey Mackay
  • You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. — Rosser Reeves
  • Don't confuse visibility with credibility. — Harvey Mackay
  • The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time. — Thomas Jefferson
  • Sometimes the most important job advertising can do, is to clarify the obvious. — Jay Chiat
  • David Ogilvy made his copywriters come up 100 different headlines for every ad they wrote. — David Ogilvy
  • On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. — David Ogilvy
  • Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits. — David Ogilvy
  • Bob Bly is among the most accomplished self-employed copywriters in recent years. — Steve Slaunwhite

Copywriting Image Quotes

Writing Copywriting Quotes

I've devoted a lot of my time and effort during the past few years to developing my advertising copywriting business to the point of where I can support my family and don't have to depend on writing fiction for my income. — George Stephen

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists. — Sara Sheridan

The mystery of writing advertisements consists mainly in saying in a few plain words exactly what it is desired to say, precisely as it would be written in a letter or told to an acquaintance. — George P. Rowell

Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling. — William Bernbach

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. — David Ogilvy

People Writing About Copywriting

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Read quotes by David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy
quotes on copywriting, creativity and advertising

214 1367
Read quotes by Leo Burnett

Leo Burnett
quotes on leadership, life and education

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Read quotes by Harvey Mackay

Harvey Mackay
quotes on time

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Read quotes by Will Rogers

Will Rogers
quotes on politics, death and aging

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Read quotes by Claude C. Hopkins

Claude C. Hopkins
quotes on education, life and leadership

49 188
Read quotes by H. G. [Herbert George] Wells

H. G. [Herbert George] Wells
quotes on leadership, slavery and love

33 527

More Copywriting Quotes

In most agencies, account executives outnumber the copywriters two to one. If you were a dairy farmer, would you employ twice as many milkers as you had cows? — David Ogilvy

The copywriter uses words as tools to persuade and motivate an audience. You persuade your readers that you have something valuable to offer; you motivate them to acquire it for themselves. This is the essence of effective copywriting. — Richard Bayan

Advertising is like learning - a little is a dangerous thing. If a man has not the pluck to keep on advertising, all the money he has already spent is lost. — P. T. Barnum

The trouble with many copywriters in general agencies are that they don't really think in terms of selling. They have never written direct-response; they have never tasted blood — David Ogilvy

In striving to produce an attractive headline, the copywriter should not emphasize the "quick, easy way" to such an extent that the headline becomes unbelievable. — John Caples

Every copywriter knows what it is to struggle with a copy for hours, for days - fixing it, polishing it, rearranging it. We have all been quilty of leaving the headline until the last and the spending half and hour on it - or perhaps only ten minutes. — John Caples

If you want to be a well-paid copywriter, please your client. If you want to be an award-winning copywriter, please yourself. If you want to be a great copywriter, please your reader. — Steve Hayden

We have become so accustomed to hearing everyone claim that his product is the best in the world, or the cheapest, that we take all such statements with a grain of salt. — Robert Collier

Winston Churchill said that appetite was the most important thing about education. Leadership guru Warren Bennis says he wants to be remembered as 'curious to the end.' David Ogilvy contends that the greatest ad copywriters are marked by an insatiable curiosity 'about every subject under the sun.' — Tom Peters

You must make the product interesting not just make the ad different. And that's what too many of the copywriters in America today don't yet understand. — Rooser Reeves

You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And that's what too many of the copywriters in the U.S. today don't yet understand. — Rosser Reeves

I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter. — Carl Sandburg

I have a lot of respect for advertising. If I didn't teach and could go back in time, I might try and become a copywriter. I especially like print ads that combine a photo with a short caption or tag line. — Elaine Equi

I'd like to be remembered, as a copywriter who had some big ideas. That's what the advertising business is all about. Big ideas — David Ogilvy

If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring. — David Ogilvy

Cindy is a terrific writer and has both a studied - and an intuitive - understanding of the best practices of no-hype, high results copywriting. — Steve Slaunwhite

I'm hard-nosed about luck. I think it sucks. Yeah, if you spend seven years looking for a job as a copywriter, and then one day somebody gives you a job, you can say, Gee, I was lucky I happened to go up there today. But, dammit, I was going to go up there sooner or later in the next seventy years. If you're persistent in trying and doing and working, you almost make your own fortune. — Jerry Della Femina

Advertising seemed almost natural to me because it was a business where you had to inform, persuade and educate. And so from being a junior copywriter to being the creative director of one of the largest advertising agencies in the country took me 4.5 years, which is, well, a fairly spectacular rise. — Bryce Courtenay

20 years ago, when Bob Bly starting teaching copywriting, the field was deeply shrouded in mystery. Now, thanks to Bob, learning copywriting, though still a tricky proposition, is much easier. — Ken McCarthy

When two kids came along, I couldnt see how I could support them. The way it played out, I was away from the theatre for five years. I was a postie for the first part and then worked as an advertising copywriter, but I somehow found my way back. — Peter Hambleton

Most copywriters are like engines. They take a while to warm up to get to the point. — Drayton Bird

Copy is a direct conversation with the consumer. — Shirley Polykoff

This is the copywriters task: not to create mass desire — but to channel and direct it. — Eugene Schwartz

It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money. — David Ogilvy

People aren't interested in you. They're interested in themselves — Dale Carnegie

Before you put pen to paper, before you ring for your stenographer, decide in your own mind what effect you want to produce on your reader — what feeling you must arouse in him. — Robert Collier

The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her. — David Ogilvy

Advertising is like learning - a little is a dangerous thing. — P. T. Barnum

No, I don't think a 68-year-old copywriter . . . can write with the kids. That he's as creative. That he's as fresh. But he may be a better surgeon. His ad may not be quite as fresh and glowing as the Madison Ave. fraternity would like to see it be, and yet he might write an ad that will produce five times the sales. And that's the name of the game, isn't it? — Rosser Reeves

In Conclusion

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