Edward Bernays Quotes

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

“The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia.”

“Modern business must have its finger continuously on the public pulse.”

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

“The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.”

“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.”

“Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public's consent to a program or goal.”

“The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.”

“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.”

“Anything could be accomplished if people could be made to see what looked like an obstacle as an opportunity. All that was required was a bit of insight into how people defined obstacles and opportunities, along with some creative prodding to get them to rethink those definitions.”

“I recognized that words and pictures had been powerful factors in helping win the war. Paris became a training school without instructors, in the study of public opinion and people.... The process was as fortuitous as the flight of windswept pollen.”

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.”

“The public's ability to create its own heroes from wisps of impressions and its own imagination and to build them almost into flesh-and-blood gods fascinated me. Of course, I knew the ancient Greeks and other early civilized peoples had done this. But now it was happening before my eyes in contemporary America.”

“The ballet liberated American dance and, through it, the American spirit. It fostered a more tolerant view toward sex; it changed our music and our appreciation of it.... The ballet scenarios made modern art more palatable; color assumed new importance. It was a turning point in the appreciation of the arts in the United States.”

“Public relations today is horrible. Any dope, any nitwit, any idiot can call him or herself a public relations practitioner.”

“Perhaps Cornell was the right place for me after all, because it furnished, in a negative way, a test for aptitudes and adjustments.... I was looking for something that was not there and found something better.”