Edward Bernays quotes - page 2

Edward Bernays was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda. His innovative techniques shaped modern marketing, advertising, and the ways in which public opinion is influenced. He is often called "the father of public relations" for his lasting impact on the industry. Here are 44 of his quotes:

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.

Edward Bernays

While, under the handicraft of small-unit system of production was that typical a century ago, demand created the supply, today supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand. A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable. This entails a vastly more complex system of distribution than formerly.

Edward Bernays

When Napoleon said, 'Circumstance? I make circumstance‚' he expressed very nearly the spirit of the public relations counsel's work.

Edward Bernays

One reason, perhaps, why the politician today is slow to take up methods which are a commonplace in business life is that he has such ready entry to the media of communication on which his power depends. The newspaperman looks to him for news. And by his power of giving or withholding information the politician can often effectively censor political news. But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.

Edward Bernays

It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself...This general principle, that men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual psychology...Human desires are the steam which makes the soial machine work. Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that cast, loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society.

Edward Bernays

We are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Edward Bernays

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

Edward Bernays

Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.

Edward Bernays

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.

Edward Bernays

Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.

Edward Bernays

The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group.

Edward Bernays

The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that his is a twofold job: education as a teacher and education as a propagandist.

Edward Bernays

In some departments of our daily life, in which we imagine ourselves free agents, we are ruled by dictators exercising great power.

Edward Bernays

I believe that competition in the future will not be only an advertising competition between individual products or between big associations, but that it will in addition be a competition of propaganda.

Edward Bernays

Modern business must have its finger continuously on the public pulse. It must understand the changes in the public mind and be prepared to interpret itself fairly and eloquently to changing opinion.

Edward Bernays

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

Edward Bernays

Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Edward Bernays