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

Edward Bernays

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Edward Bernays
Consent
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Democratic
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Persuade
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More quotes by Edward Bernays

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The counsel on public relations is not an advertising man but he advocates for advertising where that is indicated. Very often he is called in by an advertising agency to supplement its work on behalf of a client. His work and that of the advertising agency do not conflict with or duplicate each other.
Edward Bernays
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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.
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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
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It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man.
Edward Bernays
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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.
Edward Bernays
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Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.
Edward Bernays
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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
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People want to go where they wanted to be led.
Edward Bernays
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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.
Edward Bernays
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The best place to find things: the public library.
Edward Bernays
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In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered to him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed.
Edward Bernays
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The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by intertia.
Edward Bernays
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The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.
Edward Bernays
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The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised 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.
Edward Bernays
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We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
Edward Bernays
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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
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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.
Edward Bernays
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Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
Edward Bernays
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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
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As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.
Edward Bernays