Quotes & Sayings About Madison Avenue

Calvin: Trick or Treat!
Adult: Where's your costume? What are you supposed to be?
Calvin: I'm yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you're old and weak!
... Boy, am I scary or what? — Bill Watterson

Martin Mayer's 1958 book Madison Avenue USA — Paul Feldwick

What is self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue. — Madeleine L'Engle

Politics is not really politics any more. It is run, for the most part, by Madison Avenue advertising firms, who sell politicians to the public the way they sell bars of soap or cans of beer. — Helen Caldicott

I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction. Why can't we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images? — William S. Burroughs

There's more musical freedom on Madison Avenue than anywhere else. It's an Eden for a composer. — Mitch Leigh

The problem of how to make the Internet advertising friendly bewildered and obsessed Madison Avenue for much of the 1990s. Advertising won. — Robert Waterman McChesney

The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What's the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good? — Martina Navratilova

If Madison Avenue advertising executives were to pick a song that would best represent America, the last one they would choose is 'The Star Spangled Banner.' — Ronald Kessler

Summer sticks to her skirt sumptuously, in the shiny gray fabric hanging loosely from her curves. Her chestnut eyes, apparently hidden from strangers; her simple but graceful face, unpainted by Madison Avenue; and her straight black hair, parted down the middle without ego, all suggest a minimalist - almost pastoral - beauty that is oddly discordant with her fashionable attire, comfortable indifference to the crowds, and quasi-attentive perusal of the Time magazine unfolded over her hand. — Zack Love

Do you remember what I told you that first time at Taki's? About faerie food?"
"I remember you said you ran down Madison Avenue naked with antlers on your head", said Clary, blinking silver drops off her lashes. — Cassandra Clare

If humanity has any hope of effecting real change for the better, it will not come from the Madison Avenue false reality makers who've cast Barack Obama as the savior of the world. To alter our course from tyranny to liberty, to defeat the corrupt elite, we must get past the puppets and confront the real power structure of the planet. — Alex Jones

It may be the way the cookie crumbles on Madison Avenue, but in Hong Kong its the way the egg rolls. — Robert Orben

When I got back to Madison Avenue, I realized that copywriters made more than artists, so I switched. — Gary Jennings

Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled. — David Ogilvy

For all his Caribbean clothes and his Madison Avenue manners, even with his surfside apartment and his Alfa Romeo roadster, there was so much Kansas in Sanderson that it was embarrassing to see him deny it. — Hunter S. Thompson

To be content, horse people need only a horse, or, lacking that, someone else who loves horses with whom they can talk. It was always that way with my grandfather. He took me places just so we could see horses, be near them. We went to the circus and the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. We watched parades down Fifth Avenue. Finding a horse, real or imagined, was like finding a dab of magic potion that enlivened us both. Sometimes I'd tell my grandfather about all the horses in my eleborate dreams. He'd lean over, smile, and assure me that, one day, I'd have one for real. And if my grandfather, my Opa, told me something was going to come true, it always did. — Allan J. Hamilton

Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark. — Nat King Cole

It was strange to read about the people he knew in New York, Ed and Lorraine, the newt-brained girl who had tried to stow herself away in his cabin the day he sailed from New York. It was strange and not at all attractive. What a dismal life they led, creeping around New York, in and out of subways, standing in some dingy bar on Third Avenue for their entertainment,watching television, or even if they had enough money for a Madison Avenue bar
or a good restaurant now and then, how dull it all was compared to the worst little
trattoria in Venice with its tables of green salads, trays of wonderful cheeses, and
its friendly waiters bringing you the best wine in the world! 'I certainly do envy
you sitting there in Venice in an old palazzo!' Bob wrote. 'Do you take a lot of gondola rides? How are the girls? Are you getting so cultured you won't speak to any of us when you come back? How long are you staying, anyway ? — Patricia Highsmith

There are certainly numberless women of fashion who consider it perfectly natural to go miles down Fifth Avenue, or Madison Avenue, yet for whom a voyage of half a dozen blocks to east or west would be an adventure, almost a dangerous impairment of good breeding. — Jules Romains

We gave the show away and in return, we received a certain number of minutes per hour for the three-hour show that we could sell to Madison Avenue. One of the first sponsors was MGM Records. — Casey Kasem

Adorable in her not-very-bright submissiveness, charming in her childlike delight in shiny floors, even forgivable in her spiteful competition for the whitest, brightest wash, Madison Avenue's girl-next door is all the American male could wish for: unless, by some miscarriage, he should fancy human companionship. — Vivian Gornick

It [culture] invites people to diminish themselves, and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines, meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue, and Hollywood, and what have you. — Terence McKenna

There is no question in my mind that we live in one of the truly bestial centuries in human history. There are plenty of signposts for the future historian, and what do they say? They say 'Auschwitz' and 'Dresden' and 'Hiroshima' and 'Vietnam' and 'Napalm.' For many years we all woke up to the daily body count on the radio. And if there were a way to kill people with the B Minor Mass, the Pentagon-Madison Avenue axis would have found it. — Erwin Chargaff

They say that Madison Avenue will only pay high dollars in advertising if they get the 18-35 age range. — Sharon Gless

Television, introduced at the close of World War II, has become a form of electronic heroin, and it isn't even your trip. They don't even let you go on your own trip, you get a trip designed by Madison Avenue. — Terence McKenna

perhaps it's philosophy that best explains why savoring responsibility leads to fulfillment. The model of happiness perpetuated by the cultural juggernauts of Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and Disneyesque fairy tales of everyday effervescence, broad-smiled contentedness, and perfect relationships is a historically anomalous, and for most, unachievable state. In contrast, we shall return to eudaimonia, the classical Greek concept of happiness that essentially means the "flourishing" or "rich" life. With their devotion to training, meticulousness, and desire for quiet power and accountability, Invisibles understand the value of a life not necessarily of the moment-to-moment happiness that many mistakenly strive for, but of an overall richness of experience, a life grounded in eudaimonic values. — David Zweig

I used to know Madison Avenue advertisers. I didn't like 'em. Bunch of jerks. — James Rosenquist

Ads are carefully designed by the Madison Avenue frog-men of-the-mind for semiconscious exposure. — Marshall McLuhan

You know why Madison Avenue advertising has never done well in Harlem? We're the only ones who know what it means to be Brand X. — Dick Gregory

I could head east from Fifth Avenue and reliably reach Madison, turn south from 53rd and get to 52nd every single time. The scientist - or the Buddhist - might declare such perceptions were illusions, but not one of them would head uptown to get to the Bowery. They knew what they knew. They saw what they saw. So — Andrew Klavan

What is a self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue. Picture Satan in a business suit, with well-groomed horns and a superbly switching tail, sitting at his huge executive's desk, thinking, 'Aha! If I can substitute images for reality I can get a lot more people under my domination. — Madeleine L'Engle

I feel more voluntary about my pleasures and pains than the average American who has his needs dictated by Madison Avenue (my projections, of course). I feel sustained, excited, and constantly growing in my spiritual and intellectual pursuits. — Duane Elgin

I literally went straight to New York City from Iraq, which was bizarre and complicated. I was walking down Madison Avenue, and it was spring, and people were smartly dressed, and it was so strange because there was no sense that we were at war. It was something to grapple with. — Phil Klay

Wrong' training can be a very innocent thing. Consider a father who allows his child to read good books. That child may soon cease to watch television or go to the movies, nor will he eventually read Book-of-the-Month Club selections, because they are ludicrous and dull. As a young man, then, he will effectually be excluded from all of Madison Avenue and Hollywood and most of publishing, because what moves him or what he creates is quite irrelevant to what is going on: it is too fine. His father has brought him up as a dodo. — Paul Goodman

No, there wouldn't be," Holden said. "It'd be entirely different." Sally looked at him; he had contradicted her so quietly. "It wouldn't be the same at all. We'd have to go downstairs in elevators with suitcases and stuff. We'd have to call up everyone and tell 'em goodbye and send 'em postcards. And I'd have to work at my father's and ride in Madison Avenue buses and read newspapers. We'd have to go to the Seventy-second Street all the time and see newsreels. Newsreels! There's always a dumb horse race and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship. You don't see what I mean at all." "Maybe I don't. Maybe you don't, either," Sally said. Holden stood up, with his skates swung over one shoulder. "You give me a royal pain," he announced quite dispassionately. — J.D. Salinger

In the area we're discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings. — Norman Lear

If I'm walking very, very fast down Madison Avenue in the middle of the day, I'll say I'm stopped 10 times. — Kristin Davis

Nan Kempner wore one of the first Saint Laurent trouser suits to one of those fancy Madison Avenue restaurants and was denied access. She famously took off her pants and walked in wearing only the jacket. And it was that kind of revolution that was echoed in fashion and in life. — Suzy Menkes

And far away in goddamn L.A. or Madison Avenue is the prick who decided that Skittles would sell more quickly if they promised Jalens they would taste the fucking rainbow which is like a complete fucking impossibility and even if it wasn't who said a rainbow would even taste good you know? — Sergio De La Pava

Ho threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, and alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse and the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion and the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising and the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality.. — Allen Ginsberg

I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I'd been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'd totted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue. — Sylvia Plath

I mean Buckingham Palace has never hired a professional public relations outfit let alone a Madison Avenue type and they would throw up their hands in horror at the very idea. — Anthony Holden

Vine, the Ringling Brothers circus, Friendster, horseshoes, pay phones, typewriters, etc. Things go out of business. Don't think it can't happen to Madison Avenue. Adapt or die. — Andrew Essex

I did large drawings of couples having sex! Men and woman enjoying intercourse and oral sex in a Madison Avenue Gallery? That was the first time I broke a barrier that made me think, some idiot is going to blow my brains out for sure. — Betty Dodson

The myth of altruism as a motivating factor in our behavior could arise and survive only in a society bundled in the sterile gauze of New England puritanism and Protestant morality and tied together with the ribbons of Madison Avenue public relations. It is one of the classic American fairy tales. From — Saul D. Alinsky

In this day and age, love is temporary and marriage is unnatural
the product of Madison Avenue advertising executives and television producers. — Michael Palmer

It is by manipulating "hidden forces" that the advertising experts induce us to buy their wares - a toothpaste, a brand of cigarettes, a political candidate. And it is by appealing to the same hidden forces - and to others too dangerous for Madison Avenue to meddle with - that Hitler induced the German masses to buy themselves a Fuehrer, an insane philosophy and the Second World War. — Aldous Huxley

Don't order any of the faerie food," said Jace, looking at her over the top of his menu. "It tends to make humans a little crazy. One minute you're munching a faerie plum, the next minute you're running naked down Madison Avenue with antlers on your head. Not," he added hastily, "that this has ever happened to me. — Cassandra Clare

Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation. — Marshall McLuhan

There is nothing Madison Avenue can give us that will make us more beautiful women. We are beautiful because God created us that way. — Marianne Williamson

As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship? — David Ogilvy