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For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Public relations is at best promotion or manipulation, at worst evasion and outright deception. What it is never about is a free flow of information.

My view is different. Public relations are a key component of any operation in this day of instant communications and rightly inquisitive citizens.

In public relations, you live with the reality that not every disaster can be made to look like a misunderstood triumph.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn't about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

Public opinion shapes our destinies and guides the progress of human affairs.

In this digital age, there is no place to hide behind public relations people. This digital age requires leaders to be visible and authentic and to be able to communicate the decisions they've made and why they've made them, to be able to acknowledge when they've made a mistake and to move forward, to engage in the debate.

We cannot pretend that reality is different from what it is.

Sometimes we pay too much attention in Washington to public relations, as opposed to the substance.