Quotes About Persuasion

Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.

Opinions have greater power than strength of hands.

There are a lot of people who call themselves teachers or leaders, but they're really just propagandists.

Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion.

One of my teachers used to call me Prince, because I always had a way of charming myself in and out of different situations.

There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Bahram smiled to himself as he listened: the arguments were marvellously simple yet irrefutable. Really, there was no language like English for turning lies into legalisms.

Words are like charms, she realizes. If said often enough, they will make it so

And when I say that is certainly true, that our marriage is over. I know what else she will say: Then you must save it. And even though I know it's hopeless- there's absolutely nothing left to save-I'm afraid if I tell her that, she'll still persuade me to try.

Historians rewrite the truth every day. What interests us is the truth that gets the reader to reach for his wallet

This might suggest that any successful exercise of apologetics, like indeed that of Lewis, must contain a strong confessional element which convinces precisely because it persuades through the force of an imaginative presentation of belief.

The more effective that communication, the more influential you become.

That, in essence, is the catastrophe of suicide for those who survive: not only the loss of someone, but the loss of the chance to persuade that person to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect.

The best investors don't get persuaded by stock blips or charts. It's about staying ahead of the curve—anticipating changes in sentiment. You've got to anticipate what newspaper headlines will say next.

a person bound to the facts can never hope to best the rabble-rouser in the arena.

There is a price to be paid for changing my worldview, and that price is good evidence and good arguments. That's the coin of the realm. If you come to me with good evidence and good arguments, I am going to be swayed to the degree that you deliver the goods.

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.

So much of feminist and antiracist work is the work of trying to convince others that sexism and racism have not ended

Macon: "It's true. And if that doesn't work, use the Jedi Mind Trick. But only if you really have to." Halley: "The what?" Macon: "The Jedi Mind Trick." He looked at me. "Didn't you ever see Star Wars?

But against love, the case was solid. Easily argued. And you could, indeed, hold it in your hand.

sometimes even when I know that you're lying, I still almost believe you.

A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.