Public Relations Quotes

Looking for pub­lic rela­tions quotes?

If you run a PR blog, you must have a blog post with the best pub­lic rela­tions quotes. It’s an unwrit­ten law.

Now, I know I’m cheat­ing a bit here:

Not all of these quotes are strictly about pub­lic rela­tions. Some of them are more busi­ness-inspired in general.

Here we go:

Public Relations Quotes

I’ll add pub­lic rela­tions quotes to this post as I go along:

“The single biggest prob­lem in com­mu­nic­a­tion is the illu­sion that it has taken place.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“Since we can­not change real­ity, let us change the eyes which see real­ity.”
— Nikos Kazantzakis

“Public rela­tions are a key com­pon­ent of any oper­a­tion in this day of instant com­mu­nic­a­tions and rightly inquis­it­ive cit­izens.”
— Alvin Adams (1804−1877)

“There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
— Oscar Wilde

“Public rela­tions is not a bag of tricks. It is a long-term effort to earn pub­lic trust.”
— Edward L. Bernays

“It takes 20 years to build a repu­ta­tion and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things dif­fer­ently.”
— Warren Buffet

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”
— Anais Nin

“Words are, of course, the most power­ful drug used by man­kind.”
— Rudyard Kipling

“If a young man tells his date how hand­some, smart and suc­cess­ful he is — that’s advert­ising. If the young man tells his date she’s intel­li­gent, looks lovely, and is a great con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist, he’s say­ing the right things to the right per­son and that’s mar­ket­ing. If someone else tells the young woman how hand­some, smart and suc­cess­ful her date is — that’s PR.”
— S. H. Simmons

“The media’s the most power­ful entity on earth. They have the power to make the inno­cent guilty and to make the guilty inno­cent, and that’s power.”
— Malcolm X

“Public rela­tions is the res­ult of things well done.”
— H. A. Simon

“The func­tion of lead­er­ship is to pro­duce more lead­ers, not more fol­low­ers.”
— Ralph Nader

“Every once in a while I’ll sit down with a jug of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Advil and dig through old press releases to see if PR agen­cies have learned how to write.”
— Mark Ragan

“Frankly, I con­sider ‘PR qual­ity’ an oxy­mor­on.”
— Christa Degnan

“In order to be irre­place­able one must always be dif­fer­ent.”
— Coco Chanel

“Public rela­tions is not just a func­tion of busi­ness, it is the very essence of busi­ness.”
— Anne Gregory

“It’s okay to have your eggs in one bas­ket as long as you con­trol what hap­pens to that bas­ket.”
— Elon Musk

“Strategy is about mak­ing choices, trade-offs; it’s about delib­er­ately choos­ing to be dif­fer­ent.”
— Michael Porter

“You can’t use up cre­ativ­ity. The more you use, the more you have.”
— Oscar Wilde

“No agency or their cli­ents will be impressed with how savvy you are to the mar­ket­place if you can’t express those thoughts in an eas­ily under­stood and accept­able way. Get the writ­ing skills down first.”
— Ronn Torossian

“The best PR is always a byproduct of great beha­viour.”
— Steve Rubel

“The pub­lic rela­tions prac­ti­tion­er is a storyteller.”
— John M. Shaefer

“Publicity is abso­lutely crit­ic­al. A good PR story is infin­itely more effect­ive than a front page ad.”
— Richard Branson

“Public rela­tions is all about repu­ta­tion — the res­ult of what you do, what you say, and what oth­ers say about you.”
— John Ronson

“It’s always a risk to speak to the press; They might report what you say.”
— Hubert H. Humphrey

“When the cir­cus comes to town they have a parade down main street. That’s pub­li­city. Behind the ele­phants are the guys with brooms and bar­rels. That’s pub­lic rela­tions.”
— Dan Acree

“In the digit­al space, atten­tion is a cur­rency. We earn it. We spend it.”
— Brian Solis

“PR means telling the truth and work­ing eth­ic­ally — even when all the media want is head­lines and all the pub­lic wants is scape­goats. Public rela­tions fails when there is no integ­rity.”
— Viv Segal

“The under­ly­ing prin­ciples of strategy are endur­ing, regard­less of tech­no­logy or the pace of change.”
— Michael Porter

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t under­stand it well enough.”
— Albert Einstein

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
— Steve Martin

“PR com­pan­ies have intel­li­gence in spades, they need more artistry.”
— John Mescal

“Social media puts the pub­lic into PR and the mar­ket into mar­ket­ing.”
— Chris Brogan

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The art of com­mu­nic­a­tion is the lan­guage of lead­er­ship.”
— James Humes

“Public rela­tions is not a black art; it is a pro­cess of com­mu­nic­a­tion.”
— David A. Ropeik

“Public rela­tions is the con­trol of the com­mu­nic­a­tion envir­on­ment.”
— Edward L. Bernays

“The role of pub­lic rela­tions is to make the path to the CEO’s office as smooth as pos­sible.”
— Stuart Ewen

“Public rela­tions is the man­age­ment of com­mu­nic­a­tion between an organ­iz­a­tion and its pub­lics.”
— Lesley Robinson

“The purest treas­ure mor­tal times afford is spot­less repu­ta­tion; that away, men are but gil­ded loam or painted clay.”
— Shakespeare

Which are the best pub­lic rela­tions quotes? Don’t hes­it­ate to mes­sage me, and I’ll add new pub­lic rela­tions quotes to this list.

PR Resource: Notable PR Contributors

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Notable PR Contributors

• Edward Bernays — The Father of PR
• Ivy Lee and the First Press Release
• P.T. Barnum: “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity”
• Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management
• John Dewey and the ‘P’ in Public Relations
• Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message”
• Leon Festinger — The Psychologist Behind Cognitive Dissonance
• Shep Gordon: “Make Parents Angry”

It’s noted that the gender bias is appar­ent here. I’m cur­rently research­ing a more bal­anced list.

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