Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read

Written by David Ogilvy 1911–1999 · British advertising executive, founder of Ogilvy & Mather
Verified In copyright

Ogilvy set this down as one of his rules in Confessions of an Advertising Man (Atheneum, 1963). Quote Investigator ↗ places it in chapter 5, page 99, and says it verified that page against a hardcopy; Wikiquote’s sourced section ↗ transcribes the same passage from the Ballantine paperback at page 87.

Last verified 23 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Verified quote & credit

“Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read” David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man (Atheneum, 1963). Verified by Quotle.info.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of David Ogilvy and the book’s publisher). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of David Ogilvy — British advertising executive, founder of Ogilvy & Mather. Theme: "Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Work
Confessions of an Advertising Man
First published
Atheneum, New York, August 1963
Quote page
99 (Atheneum hardcopy, per Quote Investigator); 87 in the Ballantine paperback, per Wikiquote
Form
A numbered rule, set as a heading, with its reasoning beneath

Never Write an Advertisement Which You Wouldn’t Want Your Own Family To Read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.

The rule is set in title case in the book, as a heading, and the three sentences beneath it are its argument. This is the passage as Quote Investigator ↗ and Wikiquote ↗ both transcribe it. We could not open the book ourselves — the Internet Archive’s scan of the 1963 Atheneum edition is lending-restricted — so the page numbers are theirs, not ours.

Quote Investigator: the citation for this rule

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ traces the line to Confessions of an Advertising Man, chapter 5, page 99, Atheneum, New York, 1963, and states the page was verified against a hardcopy. It records no earlier appearance and no other claimant.
  • Wikiquote’s sourced section ↗ carries the rule and the three sentences that follow it, citing the same book at page 87 of the Ballantine edition. Different printing, different pagination, same wording.
  • Wikipedia ↗ confirms the book: Atheneum, August 1963, structured as an eleven-chapter playbook of more than two hundred rules. This sentence is one of them.
  • The Internet Archive holds a scan of the 1963 Atheneum edition ↗, but it is lending-restricted and its full text is not searchable from here, so we could not confirm page 99 independently.
In copyright

Confessions of an Advertising Man was first published by Atheneum in August 1963 — well after 1931, the current cut-off for the United States public domain, so the book is still in copyright. Quoting one sentence with attribution is a different matter from reproducing the book.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

How it travels

Nobody else is credited with this one. What drops away is everything Ogilvy put underneath it.

The rule, quoted alone context stripped

In the book the sentence is a heading, and the case for it follows immediately: You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by. Quoted on its own it reads as a taste test; with its three sentences attached it is an argument about lying to strangers.

The words are Ogilvy’s own, in his own book. Quote Investigator ↗ cites Confessions of an Advertising Man, chapter 5, page 99.

Context

Why it mattered

Ogilvy wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man in 1963, when his agency was fifteen years old and billing $55m across nineteen clients. Wikipedia ↗ describes the book as an eleven-chapter playbook of more than two hundred rules; this is the one that turns a commercial question into a domestic one.

The move is the test, not the sentiment. Ogilvy does not argue that honest advertising performs better — he asks the writer to picture a specific reader, his own wife, and then points out that the reader on the other side of the page is somebody else’s.

You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.

Read the full story

The book was originally printed in 5,000 copies, with the profit intended for Ogilvy’s son David Fairfield Ogilvy. It sold more than a million.

A note on our sourcing: we could not open the book. The Internet Archive’s scan of the 1963 Atheneum edition is lending-restricted and not full-text searchable from here, so both page numbers on this page are other people’s locators — Quote Investigator’s 99 for the Atheneum printing, Wikiquote’s 87 for the Ballantine one. They cite the same book and the same wording, and nothing we found contradicts either.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Character Work

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: Never Write an Advertisement…quoteinvestigator.com

The citation trail, with the Atheneum 1963 page verified against a hardcopy
Wikiquote: David Ogilvyen.wikiquote.org

The sourced passage, cited to Confessions of an Advertising Man p. 87 (Ballantine)
Wikipedia: Confessions of an Advertising Manen.wikipedia.org

The book itself — Atheneum, August 1963, and its rule-by-rule structure
Wikipedia: David Ogilvyen.wikipedia.org

His career, dates and the agency he founded
Internet Archive: Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963)archive.org

A scan of the Atheneum first edition — lending-restricted, but the catalogue record confirms the imprint

The author

About David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy

1911–1999 · British advertising executive, founder of Ogilvy & Mather

David Mackenzie Ogilvy founded his advertising agency in New York in 1948 with $6,000 and financial backing from his brother Francis, then managing director of the London agency Mather & Crowther. By 1963 Ogilvy, Benson & Mather billed $55m across 19 clients, Rolls-Royce among them. Time called him “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry” in 1962, and he is widely called the father of advertising.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Ogilvy, David. Confessions of an Advertising Man. New York: Atheneum, 1963. The rule appears in chapter 5 at page 99, per Quote Investigator, which reports checking the page against a hardcopy; Wikiquote cites page 87 of the Ballantine paperback.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read’?” Last verified 23 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/never-write-an-advertisement-which-you-wouldnt-want-your/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied