Quotes About Persuasion

I hope to inspire people, influence people.

in the hands of a skilled number cruncher, this bias can be hidden far better with numbers than with stories.

Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what you don't believe yourself.

Belief is ever its own tempter to believe differently

The deadliest contagion is majority opinion.

The shameful thing is that this campaign is effective in the West. Western liberals now seem to collude against critical thought and debate. I never cease to be amazed by the fact that non-Muslims who consider themselves liberals—including feminists and advocates of gay rights—are so readily persuaded by these crass means to take the Islamists' side against Muslim and non-Muslim critics.

It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.

If there's one thing I've learned it's what a woman can do to a man's common sense.

The woman could get a confession faster than a priest.

There is a cunning, which we in England call, the turning of the cat in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him. And to say truth, it is not easy, when such a matter passed between two, to make it appear from which of them it first moved and began.

Some have in readiness so many tales and stories, as there is nothing they would insinuate, but they can wrap it into a tale; which serveth both to keep themselves more in guard, and to make others carry it with more pleasure. It is a good point of cunning, for a man to shape the answer he would have, in his own words and propositions; for it makes the other party stick the less.

The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his pleading, and not by the issue of the cause.

The mere presentation of an idea, unless we are careful about it, or unless there is within some unusual resistance, makes us believe it; and this is why the belief of others adds to our belief so quickly, for no ideas seem so very clear as those inculcated on us from every side.

My job is making irrational people do rational things.

To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization.

You cannot 'rationalize' what is not rational to begin with - as if lying were called 'truthization.' There is no way to obtain more truth for a proposition by bribery, flattery, or the most passionate argument - you can make more people believe the proposition, but you cannot make it more true.

A lot of progressives really believe that if we can turn out one more white paper with bullet points about how to fix Problem X, we can fix it. But that's not primarily the way you reach people or move them. You reach the heart first.

The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.

If you know what you're talking about, or if you feel that you do, the reader will believe you.

A great comic-book cover occurs when it gets a potential reader to pick the book up and start thumbing through it. That's a comic cover's job: Attract someone's attention, and persuade them to try the issue out.

As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.

First, President Reagan was not enthusiastic. But I built up a relationship with him in other areas and then persuaded him that this was important to us and to me, and that we had to at least be in the process of looking at this seriously.

I think it was when I realised I could talk anybody into doing just about anything I wanted them to.

Probably the best advertising jobs of all are done by governments to convince people to go to war.