“I am not a doctor, or a lawyer or critic but an advertising man. As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world. The first four words ever uttered, ‘Let there be light,’ constitute its charter. All Nature is vibrant with its impulse. The brilliant plumage of the bird is color advertising addressed to the emotions of its mate. Plants deck themselved with blossoms, not for beauty only, but to attract the patronage of the bee and so by spreading pollen on its wings, to insure the perpetuation of their kind. . . .

I propose to speak of the advertisements of Jesus which have survived for twenty centuries and are still the most potent influence in the world.”

—Bruce Barton, co-founder of the BBDO agency, from The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus, 1926; quoted by James B. Twitchell in Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism, 1999.