A Quote by Norman Lear

As H.L. Mencken once said, 'nobody ever when broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.' Our show [All in the Family] countered that witticism. I think he was wrong.

Norman Lear

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American American People Broke Ever Family Intelligence Nobody Once Our People Said Show Think Underestimating Wrong

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Norman Lear
American - Producer
Born: July 27, 1922

H. L. Mencken once said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. That is not true. I have come to believe that it pays to make all your layouts project a feeling of good taste, provided that you do it unobtrusively. An ugly layout suggests an ugly product. There are very few products which do not benefit from being given a first class ticket through life.

David Ogilvy

That's a very hard thing to help the establishment know. We're still an establishment that thinks the average mentality is something like 13 years of age, that never forgot H.L. Mencken's notion that nobody lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. That's the horseshit the establishment has always lived with.

Norman Lear

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

H. L. Mencken

People think I left The Band and spoiled this whole thing, and that's not what happened. Nobody broke up The Band. Nobody ever said, 'That's it, we're done.'

Robbie Robertson

There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

H. L. Mencken

I was once on a German talk show, and this woman said to me, 'Mr. Williams, why do you think there is not so much comedy in Germany?' And I said, 'Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?'

Robin Williams

No one has ever gone broke underestimating the insecurities of the gay and lesbian consumer.

Dan Savage

Nobody has ever gone broke selling escape to the American public.

John Lahr

I'm out there to clean the plate. Once they've read what I've written on a subject, I want them to think, 'That's it!' I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they've written a story, nobody will ever try it again.

Richard Ben Cramer

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

H. L. Mencken

I think there's been this long cycle of the big companies making a lot of money by underestimating people's intelligence and people are used to it now. So, they're so used to having their intelligence underestimated that, for most of them, it really isn't worth the bother of paying a little more attention to something that might hit them on a deeper level. But you can't really read people's minds.

J. Robbins

People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself.

Douglas Adams

American society was economically ill-run in the 1980s. Our society has been on a consumption binge. If the American people had a town meeting and said, 'What do we care about posterity? Posterity hasn't done anything for us; we're going to whoop it up now,' that is a rational judgment. But nobody ever did that.

Paul Samuelson

If Americans are working harder than ever earning less than they once did, our government and our leaders should step up, offer a plan, fix what's wrong -- or they should step aside, the recovery has been everywhere but in the family paychecks. The American Dream has become a mirage for far too many.

Jeb Bush

We need to look to our laurels a bit with television in this country. I don't think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the U.K., and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing it all on ratings.

Charles Dance

I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

Lynn Nottage

A Quote by Norman Lear

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