We all love a good quote, from celebrities, books, PRs, business owners, films, reality TV, marketers, fashion gurus, magazine editors and beyond. Here’s my edit of the best PR and marketing quotes in the industry. I’ve thrown a few of mine in for good measure.
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” Muhammad Ali
“No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.”
Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes
“They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate.” Hans Christian Andersen,, “The Princess and the Pea”
You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Still I Rise. Maya Angelou
Remember remember the fifth of November Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason Should ever be forgot.
“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” Diane Arbus
“Wit is educated insolence.” Aristotle
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong
“Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar,
That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar.”
Matthew Arnold, Lines Written in Kensington Gardens
“The War office kept three sets of figures – one to mislead the public, another to mislead the cabinet and a third to mislead itself.” Herbert Asquith
“You can choose to think in ways that will support you in your happiness and success instead of ways that don’t.” T. Harv Eker
“A monologue is not a decision.” Clement Attlee to Winston Churchill
“Nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.” Margaret Atwood
“There are two kinds of habits: DOING habits and NOT-DOING habits.” T. Harv Eker
“Our actions come from our feelings, which come from our thoughts.” T. Harv Eker
“Habit is second nature.” Auctoritates Aristotelis
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity. All things are petty, easily changed, and vanishing away.” Marcus Aurelius
“The folly of people’s not staying comfortably at home when they can!” Emma, Jane Austen
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
“Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.” Jane Austen, Sense & Sensibility
“Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.” – Lauren Bacall
“It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth.” Arthur Balfour
“The man is not wholly evil – he has a Thesaurus in his cabin.” J. M. Barrie on Captain Hook, Peter Pan
“For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.” Ethel Barrymore
“Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.” John Barrymore
“The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick.” – L. Frank Baum
“Let’s roll.” Todd Beamer
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett
“Mr. Watson – Come here – I want to see you.” Alexander Graham Bell
“I like honesty and sincerity; and I maintain that an artist should not be shabbily treated.” Ludwig van Beethoven
“Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.” Ludwig van Beethoven
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” Benjamin Franklin
“Then one day there really was a wolf, but when the boy shouted they didn’t believe him” Aesop, The boy Who Cried Wolf
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” John Dalberg Acton
“A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.” Aesop
“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” Ansel Adams
“The Answer to the Great Question…Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,’ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“I am not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
Thomas Edison
“It’s the good girls who keep the diaries: the bad girls never have the time.”
Tallulah Bankhead
“The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.”
Susan Sontag
“There are hazards in everything one does but there are greater hazards in doing nothing.”
Shirley Williams
“The thing woman have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just take it.”
Roseanne Barr
“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”
Rene Descartes
“In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.”
Nora Ephron
“It is the wolf that makes the sheep reflect.”
Madame de Pompadour
“If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.”
Katharine Hepburn
“Groan and forget it.”
Jessamyn West
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Helen Keller
“We will either find a way, or make one.”
Hannibal
“If I’m too strong for people that’s their problem.”
Glenda Jackson
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
Dolly Parton
I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.”
Charles Schulz
“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.”
Anthony Robbins
“Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.”
Boris Pasternak
“Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.”
Roald Dahl
“I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it.”
Roald Dahl
“Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso
“Everything you do or say is public relations.”
Unknown
“The history of PR is… a history of a battle for what is reality and how people will see and understand reality.”
Stuart Ewen
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein
“Advertising is saying you’re good. PR is getting someone else to say you’re good.”
Jean-Louis Gassee
“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.”
Seth Godin
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
George Orwell
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
Rudyard Kipling
“If I was down to the last dollar of my marketing budget I’d spend it on PR!”
Bill Gates
“Publicity, publicity, publicity is the great moral factor and force in our public life.”
Joseph Pulitzer
“Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.”
John D. Rockefeller
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Albert Einstein
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.”
Benjamin Franklin
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Oscar Wilde
“I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been ‘lucky.'”
Oprah
Grammar. The difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit.
“Bull shit, bull shit. We’re in PR that’s what we do isn’t it?” Helen Quilley aka Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors
“I don’t believe in the Republican party or the Democratic party. I just believe in parties.” Samantha Jones Sex and the City
“Money, my friends makes the world go round but it is marketing that makes it spin.” NakedPRGirl
“Let’s do a lap before we commit to a location.” Cher, Clueless
“There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments.” C.S. Lewis
“A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can’t make old friends.” Christopher Hitchens
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” Mark Twain
“It’s Levi-o-sa, not Levio-sar.” Hermione Granger
“Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you.” Paulo Coelho
“You gotta wash that hair.” Megan, Bridesmaids
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas A. Edison
“What’s past is prologue.” Shakespeare, The Tempest
“I’m looking for the least amount of responsibility.”
Kevin Spacey in American Beauty
“SHOW ME THE MONEY!”
Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire
“There’s nothing bigger or better than the World Cup. It can make or break you. It almost broke me. It was all going well but a single moment changed my life. I flipped out at one player, stupidly. I was young and you make silly mistakes. It was a mistake. That’s when I went through all the s**t that I went through. Four years I got abused by people by media. In a way I’m glad it happened it made me stronger.”
David Beckham, Into the Unknown, BBC1 2014
“He told me to never complain, never explain.”
Kate Moss on Johnny Depp
Read more – Politics is a Catwalk
“And…and the word that people kept uh…using was authentic and…But here’s the problem, this isn’t even my tie. This tie was selected for me by a group of specialists, in Tenafly New Jersey, who chose it over fifty six other ties we tested. In fact, our data su…suggests that I have to stick to either a tie that is red or a tie that is blue. A yellow tie made it look as if I was taking my situation lightly and I may in fact pull my pants down at any moment. A silver tie meant that I’d forgotten my roots. My shoes, you know shiny shoes we associate with a high priced lawyers and bankers. If you want to get a working mans vote you need to scuff up your shoes a little bit, but you can’t scuff ’em so much that you alienate the lawyers and the bankers, cause you need them to pay for the specialist back in Tenafly.”
Matt Damon as David Norris in The Adjustment Bureau
Zayn Malik’s One Direction Leaving Statement
The Theory of Everything – Read my NAKED REVIEW on the award winning film starring Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking – 5 Life Lessons from The Theory of Everything .
“However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope.”
Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything.
Reality TV – Read more the secrets on the marketing behind your favourite shows with NAKED FEATURE Reality TV – I’ve Got the X Factor Get Me Out of Here!
“I’m not a one trick pony. I’m not a ten trick pony. I’m a whole field of ponies.”
Stuart Baggs, The Apprentice
“Ok so caring judge OR nasty judge. Pick a role people. You can’t be everything to everyone,” NakedPRGirl.
Love, love, love. From romance quotes to fairytales read all about the marketing of love with my NAKED FEATURE Love Makes the (Marketing) World Go Round.
“We still buy into the concept of the fairytale…”
“If you didn’t…” NakedPRGirl on love and expectations
“Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he’s not easy to spot; he’s really funny and he makes you laugh and he has perfect hair,” Taylor Swift on fairytales.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.’ Immediately the hair fell down and the king’s son climbed up. At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes had never yet beheld, came to her; but the king’s son began to talk to her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her.
Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought: ‘He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does’; and she said yes, and laid her hand in his.” Rapunzel by The Brothers Grimm
Valentine’s Day generates an estimated £9.2 billion in retail sales
New Year New You! Why New Year marketing campaigns are SO popular in the PR Dictionary.
“New Year’s Resolution = be thinner & fitter with dry Janary/juice diet with EVERYONE ELSE ON EARTH who’ve just discovered the gym.” NakedPRGirl
Hello New Year – the time for reinvention. In January I’m opening a gym called ‘Resolutions.’ It will have exercise equipment for the first 2 weeks & then turn into a bar for the rest of the year.
PR – How to Get a Job in PR.
“Everybody’s there, everybody! Big names you know.” Edina Monsoon, PR Guru, Absolutely Fabulous
