Quotes About Persuasion

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.

What I don't claim is that the Persuasion Filter is an accurate view of reality. I have no reason to believe humans evolved with the capability to understand their reality. That capability was not important to survival. When it comes to evolution, any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough.

The popular interpretation of how Trump won is that he understood the American people and devised policies that they wanted. My filter says the opposite. It says Trump convinced the public that his policies were the ones they should care about the most. And so they did. Obviously every voter is different, and one variable doesn't explain an election. But my point is that persuasion was more important to the outcome than policies; we just perceive it to be the other way around.

Trump knew his Republican base has a strong negative reaction to O'Donnell, so he bonded with them on that point. This is the persuasion method known as pacing and leading. First you match your audience's emotional condition to gain trust, and later you are in a position to lead them.

On August 13, 2015, I predicted in my blog that Donald Trump had a 98 percent chance of winning the presidency based on his persuasion skills. A week earlier, the most respected political forecaster in the United States—Nate Silver—had put Trump's odds of winning the Republican nomination at 2 percent in his FiveThirtyEight.com blog.

Trump could have simply said he wanted better immigration control, but that would not have been good visual persuasion. Concepts without images are weak sauce. So instead, Trump sold us a mental image of a "big, beautiful wall." He said "wall" so many times that we all started to picture it. Before long, we started seeing artists' renderings of potential walls. Even the opposition media started running videos of existing walls and walls in other countries.

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.

Trump's unexpected win created a persuasion bomb that no one knew how to defuse. The anti-Trumpers were locked into their Hitler movie, and confirmation bias would keep them there. It was a terrible situation for a country. And it was an enormous challenge for Trump, the Master Persuader.

Most people think they have perfectly good bullshit detectors. But if that were the case, trial juries would always be unanimous, and we'd all have the same religious beliefs.

As a trained persuader, I prefer not to join any kind of tribe. Doing so triggers an automatic bias toward tribe opinion and blinds one to better thinking. It also marks you as an enemy to competing tribes.

that people are more influenced by visual persuasion, emotion, repetition, and simplicity than they are by details and facts.

Persuasion is effective even when the subject recognizes the technique. Everyone knows that stores list prices at $9.99 because $10.00 sounds like too much. It still works.

A good general rule is that people are more influenced by visual persuasion, emotion, repetition, and simplicity than they are by details and facts.

Word-thinking is a term I invented to describe a situation in which people are trying to win an argument by adjusting the definition of words. In these situations there is no appeal to reason.

You're wasting your time if you try to make someone see reason when reason is not influencing the decision.

Unfortunately, most people believe that analogies are one of the best ways to persuade. That fact goes far in explaining why it seems that every debate on the Internet ends with a Hitler analogy. The phenomenon is so common it has its own name: Godwin's law. But I doubt many people have changed an opinion just because a stranger on the Internet compared them to Hitler. A direct attack usually just hardens people into their current opinions.

You young things are too easily persuaded by the touch of lips.

Once you told yourself a story enough times, it was so easy to keep on believing it.

Tally wondered if you could talk somebody out of their brain damage.

Volger looked out across the glacier, his hands deep in his pockets. May I be frank? Alek laughed. Feel free to put aside your usual tact. I shall, Volger said. When your father decided to marry Sophie, I was one of those who tried to talk him out of it. So I have your dismal powers of persuasion to thank for my existence. You're very welcome.

Recibimos con docilidad toda primera impresión, porque el hombre está hecho de tal modo, que llega a persuadirse de que son verdad las cosas más absurdas, pero desde luego se graban en él tan profundamente, que infeliz del que pretenda destruirlas o borrarlas.

Bundan anlad?m ki bir yazar ikinci bas?l??ta hikayesini de?i?tirirse eskisinden daha iyi ?ekle de soksa, yine de eserine zarar vermi? olur. Biz insanlar daima ilk izlenime de?er veririz. ?nsan, en inan?lmayacak ?eylere kanabilecek yarat?l??tad?r. Ama bir kez kafas?na bir ?ey yerle?ti mi, onu söküp atmak isteyenin vay haline!

Don't worry about selling the company. If you ask great questions, your interviews will do that for you.

It is surprising to see what superficial, inconsequential reasonings satisfy the most part of mankind. A piece of wit, a jest, a simile, or a quotation of an Author, passes for a mighty argument.... This weakness and effeminacy of mankind in being persuaded where they are delighted, have made them the sport of orators, poets, and men of wit.