Edward Bernays Quotes

“For the same reason I read the National Geographic, I like to see places I will never visit.”

“It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man.”

“Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.”

“People want to go where they wanted to be led.”

“The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.”

“The best place to find things: the public library.”

“This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas.”

“We govern what the public thinks about.”

“When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And 'propaganda' got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words so we found the word 'councelor of public relations'.”

“It is axiomatic that men who know little are often intolerant of a point of view that is contrary to their own.”

“Lovers have been parted by bitter quarrels on theories of pacificism or militarism; and when an argument upon an abstract question engages opponents they often desert the main line of arguments in order to abuse each other.”

“People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search for facts that are not readily available to them.”

“Progress seldom occurs through the abrupt expulsion by a group of its old ideas in favor of new ideas, but rather through the rearrangement of the thought of the individuals in these groups with respect to each other and with respect to the entire membership of society. It is precisely this interlapping of groups—the variety, the inconsistency of the average man’s mental, social and psychological commitments which makes possible the gradual change from one state of affairs or from one state of mind to another. Few people are life members of one group and of one group only. The ordinary person is a very temporary member of a great number of groups. This is one of the most powerful forces making for progress in society because it makes for receptivity and open-mindedness.”

“Propaganda is a purposeful, directed effort to overcome censorship – the censorship of the group mind and the herd reaction.”

“The average citizen is the world’s most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own 'logic-proof compartments', his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction.”

“The public relations counsel must deal with the fact that persons who have little knowledge of a subject almost invariably form definite and positive judgments upon that subject.”

“The reader will recall from his own experience an almost infinite number of instances in which the amateur has been fully prepared to deliver expert advice and to give final judgment in matters upon which his ignorance is patent to everyone except himself.”

“The truth is that while it appears to be forming the public opinion on fundamental matters, the press is often conforming to it.”

“To a large degree the press, the schools, the churches, motion pictures, advertising, the lecture platform and radio all conform to the demands of the public. But to an equally large degree the public responds to the influence of these very same mediums of communication.”

“A man sits in an office deciding what stocks to buy. He imagines, no doubt, that he is planning his purchases according to his own judgment. In actual fact his judgment is a melange of impressions stamped on his mind by outside influences which unconsciously control his thought. He buys a certain railroad stock because it was in the headlines yesterday and hence is the one which comes most prominently to his mind; because he has a pleasant recollection of a good dinner on one of its fast trains; because it has a liberal labor policy, a reputation for honesty; because he has been told that J. P. Morgan owns some of its shares.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Big business will still leave room for small business.”

“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.”

“If low price is the only basis of competition with rival products, similarly produced, there ensues a cut-throat competition which can end only by taking all the profit and incentive out of the industry. The logical way out of this dilemma is for the manufacturer to develop some sales appeal other than mere cheapness, to give the product, in the public mind, some other attraction, some idea that will modify the product slightly, some element of originality that will distinguish it from products in the same line.”

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.”

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

“In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, 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.”

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

“In the ethical sense, propaganda bears the same relation to education as to business or politics. It may be abused. It may be used to over-advertise an institution and to create in the public mind artificial values. There can be no absolute guarantee against its misuse.”