Quotes About Persuasion

It is a sort of managerial aristocracy that quietly determines what we buy and how we vote and what we deem as good or bad. "They govern us," the author writes, "by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure.

Instead of assaulting sales resistance by direct attack, he is interested in removing sales resistance.

Give the people what they want" is only half sound. What they want and what they get are fused by some mysterious alchemy. The press, the lecturer, the screen and the public lead and are led by each other.

To a large degree the press, the schools, the churches, motion pictures, advertising, the lecture platform and radio all conform to the demands of the public. But to an equally large degree the public responds to the influence of these very same mediums of communication.

The public relations counsel is not needed to persuade people to standardize their points of view or to persist in their established beliefs. The established point of view becomes established by satisfying some real or assumed human need.

Propaganda is a purposeful, directed effort to overcome censorship—the censorship of the group mind and the herd reaction.

There is a thin line between convincing people of the merits of a case and suggesting they are moral outcasts if they fail to see it.

Can you do it?' 'Maybe I can, and maybe I can't. But I am going to make MacDuff think that I can. And belief,' said Gabriel Love, with the smile of an angel, 'is a wonderful thing.

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.

GOOD Reader. When I first penned this discourse, I intended it chiefly for the satisfaction of my private friends: but, since that time, have been persuaded to publish the same. And the rather, because of a disorderly Colony [of Thomas Weston's men] that are dispersed, and most of them returned [to England]; to the great prejudice and damage of him that set them forth.

Alex snorted as he packed the wound with sticky rice. "Is that stuff sterile?" Ted asked, staring at Alex. "They boil it, don't they?" Alex said, not looking up from what he was doing. Ted's frown deepened. "That doesn't seem like enough." "Trust me." Alex looked up now and smiled a little. His voice altered just a little bit, not enough to be a full command voice, but enough to be way more persuasive than any normal person's voice. "It's an old wives' tale, but it works every time.

he had had an offer for me to do television commercials for an organization that sold margarine. "I know this isn't the kind of thing you had in mind," he pointed out, "but if a conservative firm feels that you can sell their

Was it Lila who had persuaded Stefano to behave in a way that was making them the most admired and most talked about couple in the neighborhood? Was this her latest invention? Did she want to leave the neighborhood by staying in the neighborhood? Did she want to drag us out of ourselves, tear off the old skin and put on a new one, suitable for what she was inventing?

I now knew a method of speaking and writing that—by means of a refined vocabulary, stately and thoughtful pacing, a determined arrangement of arguments, and a formal orderliness that wasn't supposed to fail—sought to annihilate the interlocutor to the point where he lost the will to object.

it seemed to me that I had mastered words to the point of sweeping away forever the contradictions of being in the world, the surge of emotions, and breathless speech. In short, I now knew a method of speaking and writing that—by means of a refined vocabulary, stately and thoughtful pacing, a determined arrangement of arguments, and a formal orderliness that wasn't supposed to fail—sought to annihilate the interlocutor to the point where he lost the will to object.

Words: with them you can do and undo as you please.

It wasn't that I hadn't known these things, but that at some point, without realizing it, I had persuaded myself that I was different—that my honesty and non-lameness wouldn't be punished like that, because I had some special skill, some self-sufficiency, an ability to be alone. I always had been alone, when every other person in my family had insisted on having someone around to have sex with.

You wouldn't have a nervous breakdown. You'd give them a nervous breakdown." I forgave him for a lot when he said that. I forgave him for almost everything.

Temptation is the voice of reason without its clothes on.

.. Ideas are more powerful than guns.

In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.

Marvelous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.

you must use arguments to explain how you arrived at your conclusion. That is how you will convince others: by offering the reasons and evidence that convinced you. It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.

Truly informed sources rarely expect others to accept their conclusions simply because they assert them.