Quotes About Influence

Reality is always controlled by the people who are the most insane.

Positivity is far more than a mental preference. It changes your brain, literally, and it changes the people around you. It's the nearest thing we have to magic.

People think they follow advice but they don't. Humans are only capable of receiving information. They create their own advice. If you seek to influence someone, don't waste time giving advice. You can change only what people know, not what they do.

One thing I can say with complete certainty is that it is a bad idea to trust the majority of experts in any domain in which both complexity and large amounts of money are involved.

A lie that makes a voter feel good is more effective than a hundred rational arguments.

The most effective way to stop people from trying to persuade me is to say, 'I'm not interested.' You should try it. Don't offer a reason why you aren't interested. No one can say why a thing holds interest for some and not for others. There's no argument against a lack of interest.

How can something that doesn't exist in physical form have influence over the things that do?

Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason.

From the moment technology allowed us to know which kinds of content influenced viewership the most, the old business model of the news industry was dead media walking.

We think we are reasonable and rational most of the time. But what hypnotists have long known, and scientists have in recent years confirmed, is that our decisions are often made without appeal to the rational parts of our brains. We literally make our decisions first and then create elaborate rationalizations for them after the fact.

to letting the environment dictate how you feel on any given day, it would be like a minor superpower.

A good general rule is that people are more influenced by visual persuasion, emotion, repetition, and simplicity than they are by details and facts... On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact.

At the time of this writing I am trying to influence another national topic: climate science. My framing involves separating the science from the prediction models, and the prediction models from the economic models, and evaluating each of them separately. After all, economics is not science. Economics is more like astrology, at least when you're predicting ten years out.

PERSUASION TIP 9 Display confidence (either real or faked) to improve your persuasiveness. You have to believe yourself, or at least appear as if you do, in order to get anyone else to believe.

Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason. I've

what hypnotists have long known, and scientists have in recent years confirmed, is that our decisions are often made without appeal to the rational parts of our brains. We literally make our decisions first and then create elaborate rationalizations for them after the fact.

Here's an example of why the idea that humans are rational is pure nonsense. One of my Twitter followers copied President Trump's inauguration speech and showed it to a "leftist friend," telling him it was President Obama's speech. His friend loved it.

Pre-suading, or setting the table, is about creating mental and emotional associations that carry over. If you get the mood right, and your credibility is high, you're halfway done with your persuasion before anyone knows you started.

I believe exercise makes people smarter, psychologically braver, more creative, more energetic, and more influential. In an online article about twenty habits of successful people, the second item on the list is exercise five to seven days a week. Other studies back this notion–physical fitness and daily exercise are correlated with success in business and in life.

That was the tipping point for me. I called a meeting with my mother and announced that I was discontinuing my religious education. I explained my new hypothesis that she and all other believers were being duped for reasons I couldn't understand, but I planned to get to the bottom of it. My mother listened to my reasoning, acknowledged that I was making a well-informed decision, and never asked me to attend church again. My mom was awesome that way.

In most groups the craziest person is in control. It starts because no one wants the problems that come from pissing off a crazy person.

nutrition science wasn't science at all. It was some unholy marriage of industry influence, junk science, and government.

The business model of the press manipulated our brains until our emotions overwhelmed whatever traces of rationality we started with.

I want to be clear that I'm not expressing a preference for ignoring facts. I'm simply saying that a Master Persuader can do it and still come out ahead, no matter how many times the media points out the errors.