Top 65 Quotes & Sayings by Roy H. Williams

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American businessman Roy H. Williams.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Roy H. Williams

Roy Hollister Williams is a best selling author and marketing consultant best known for his Wizard of Ads trilogy. He is founder of the Wizard Academy institute and lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Pennie.

Contrary to popular belief, Americans don't hate advertising.
String Theory describes energy and matter as being composed of tiny, wiggling strands of energy that look like strings. And the pitch of a string's vibration determines the nature of its effect.
One thing that hasn't changed, though, is that we still have to hear the new ad 2 or 3 times before it begins to affect us, even when we're already familiar with the advertiser in question and have a positive opinion of them.
No trade will be made unless they want the thing more than they want their money. — © Roy H. Williams
No trade will be made unless they want the thing more than they want their money.
People don't trade money for things when they value their money more highly than they value the things.
Human beings are creators, flinging powerful images into the minds of their fellow men. And all of these images are built of tiny particles of thought.
According to String Theory, what appears to be empty space is actually a tumultuous ocean of strings vibrating at the precise frequencies that create the 4 dimensions you and I call height, width, depth and time.
In marketing you must choose between boredom, shouting and seduction. Which do you want?
A visual image in the hand of an artist is merely a tool to trigger a mental image.
The first step in exceeding your customer's expectations is to know those expectations.
What this means is that the first week of every new series of ads will continue to yield softer results than you can expect to see in weeks two and three.
Einstein was searching for String Theory. It not only reconciles General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics, but it reconciles Science and the Bible as well.
Writing good ads is easy when you have something to say.
If you're not worried that you're pricing it too cheap, you're not pricing it cheap enough. — © Roy H. Williams
If you're not worried that you're pricing it too cheap, you're not pricing it cheap enough.
The salability of an item can often be improved while the value itself remains unchanged.
The value of an item - in the mind of a consumer - is simply the difference between the anticipated price and the price on the tag.
It appears that the media filters we carry in our heads are like computers: they've been forced to get faster in order to keep up with the demands our high-speed society puts on them.
Numerals are images of amounts. But the amounts they represent are real.
Lives, like money, are spent. What are you buying with yours?
A meaningless statement remains meaningless no matter how often it's heard.
A visual image is a simple thing, a picture that enters the eyes.
You see a person when you look in the mirror that no one sees but you. Other people see a person when they look at you, but you're not that person, either.
In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God's creation... as music.
A portal is a transitionary device of sight or sound that functions as a sort of third gravitating body between the this and the that, pulling us toward itself, allowing us to bridge into the unknown from the known.
Strings of gravity vibrate at a different frequency than strings of light.
Have you heard of this new thing called the internet? It's giving people new expectations. It's allowing them to become their own expert. Knowledge lies anxious at their fingertips. Gloss over the truth in your advertising and you'll quickly be dismissed as a poser.
A good story often increases the salability of an item without increasing its actual value.
A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.
Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are both accepted as scientific fact even though they're mutually exclusive. Albert Einstein spent the second half of his life searching for a unifying truth that would reconcile the two.
Month after month, Wizard Academy equips people who want to make a difference. This is why journalists and scientists and artists and educators and business owners and advertising professionals and ministers are attracted to our little school.
Consequently, a young business often grows by large percentages. Mature businesses rarely do.
Words are mere shadows cast by ideas. But the ideas they represent are real.
Small thoughts fit easily into a closed mind, but big thoughts require an open one.
The person who achieves spectacular failure has at least attempted something bold. Failure is a temporary condition. Success is likewise temporary. Life, itself, is temporary - so quit hesitating. Do something!
One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is that we still have to hear the new ad 2 or 3 times before it begins to affect us, even when we’re already familiar with the advertiser in question and have a positive opinion of them.
The risk of insult is the price of clarity. To be clearly understood one must speak the simple, essential truth as plainly as he is able.
Your heart, my friend, is the size of a stadium. If you try to fill it with small things - a new car, a vacation, a promotion at work, a bigger home, a stock portfolio - a mournful echo will fill your life. But if you fill your stadium with all of humanity and search for ways to make their lives better each day, you will find yourself in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing in the right way.
In a thousand words I can have the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and almost all of the Boy Scout Oath. Now exactly what picture were you planning to trade for all that?
It is a lack of commitment, not a lack of talent, that damns you to mediocrity. — © Roy H. Williams
It is a lack of commitment, not a lack of talent, that damns you to mediocrity.
Live and “love to be fascinated.
Having the right message is what matters. It's not who you reach, it's what you say.
Five minutes in an old book quickly reveals that most of what is being sold today as new insights into human behavior is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we have had for centuries.
The risk of insult is the price of clarity.
Everyone is broken a little, I think, and the most broken of all are those who pretend they are not.
If you want the truth to prevail, you must cause people to realize the truth. This requires much more skill than is required to simply tell it.
Follow a trail of bold mistakes and at the end of them you will find a genius.
A polarizing mission statement forces the reader to choose between two sides of a line drawn in the sand. Rare is the business owner who has the courage to craft such a statement.
Our actions are all that separate our daydreams from our goals.
Take your inspiration from wherever you find it, no matter how ridiculous. — © Roy H. Williams
Take your inspiration from wherever you find it, no matter how ridiculous.
In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God's creation as music.
Use half as many words and they'll hit twice as hard.
A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again.But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.
The first step in persuasion is to entice your target to imagine doing the thing you want them to do.
Preparation, mastery, can help you overcome your fear, but mastery alone is not enough. There has to be something you want that’s worth more to you than your fear.
Guard the secret theater of your heart. See nothing there that you do not want to see happen in reality.
Impact in advertising today is 80 percent strategy, 20 percent copy. This makes it nearly impossible for good copy to compensate for weak strategy.
The value of an item—in the mind of a consumer—is simply the difference between the anticipated price and the price on the tag.
Turning the other cheek isn't submissive. It's defiant.
Opportunity never knocks. It hangs thick in the air all around you. You breathe it unthinking, and dissipate it with your sighs.
Most ads are about the product or the company that makes it...the best ads are about the customer and how the product will change his life.
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