Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) was an American author, advertising executive, and politician. He was the most celebrated advertising man of his day, thanks to his best-selling book The Man Nobody Knows (1925.)
Born in Robbins, Tennessee, Barton grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, where his father was the minister of the town’s Congregational church. Rather than following his father’s footsteps into the ministry, when Barton completed his bachelor’s degree at Amherst College, he moved into journalism and then into the emergent advertising industry.
A pioneer of the North American advertising industry, Barton co-founded the Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO) Agency in New York. BBDO became known for writing hard-hitting copy and served clients that were among the most important American businesses of the 1920s.
Barton’s bestseller, The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus (1925,) portrayed Christ as an advertising salesman. Barton also wrote many newspaper columns in addition to other books, including The Book Nobody Knows (1926) and What Can a Man Believe? (1927.)
Barton served in the U.S. Congress 1937–40 as a Republican from New York. He survived a sensational blackmail scandal before returning to BBDO in 1940. He remained chairman of the firm until his retirement in 1961.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Bruce Fairchild Barton
Many a man who pays rent all his life owns his own home; and many a family has successfully saved for a home only to find itself at last with nothing but a house.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
Topics: Home
In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times, they have to.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
Topics: Advertising
If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
Topics: Enthusiasm
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things … I am tempted to think … there are no little things.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
Business checks up on itself frequently to be sure that it still is headed for its original goals. Is there not need for a similar check-up on the part of the church?
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
The most important thing about getting somewhere is starting right where we are.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
Topics: Getting Going, Procrastination, Inaction
When you’re through changing, you’re through.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
Topics: Change
In his first years in the White House, Mr. Roosevelt apologized for each annual deficit. Each new budget message explained that, because of unforeseen circumstances, the promise of the previous year had not been met, but next year things would be better; next year there would be a balanced budget. The 1938 congressional elections were uncomfortably near at hand. it was announced that the President would deliver a Fireside Chat. In it our startled ears caught the opening accents of a grand new liturgy. Spending would be resumed, but let not the heart be troubled. Spending was no longer the rock of unsound finance on which so many liberal governments had been wrecked; it was not danger, but security. Debt, if owed to ourselves, was not debt but investment.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton
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