Quotes About Persuasion

How are we persuaded to participate in our own destruction by maintaining our silences?

DOCTOR. Exactly. One can make the insane believe anything, just because they are receptive to everything. LAURA.

Theatre is the most perfect artistic form of coercion.

People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. they did not give or ask for reasons.

Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable?

He was universally charming, as only a writer in pursuit of a publisher can be.

So it was that when a fiery wisp of a girl presented herself before an adroit, much older man of the world, credit for the seduction fell to her.

Believe me there's no spiteful stupidity, no horror, no absurd story that one can't get the idle-minded folk of a great city to swallow if one goes the right way about it—

He was unflinching, but touched too on his secret weapon, one especially valuable in 1771: "The opinion of others," he assured his former father-in-law, "I very little regard.

Cows do not sell each other hay when they are hungry. Monkeys do not sell each other bananas. Only human beings can create the perception in other human beings that, even though they have showered, they still smell bad and need an underarm deodorant to set things right.

Statesmen should remember that they have been elected to persuade and to lead, and not just to accept as fixed the momentary moods and pernicious prejudices of the public.

T]he real lie that advertising tells is not so much in what it shows, but in what it leaves out.

In economia bisogna essere furbi e capire quali siano i desideri degli altri, ma soprattutto insegnare agli altri che desideri devono avere.

The Athenians reasoned that a rapist did not pose a threat to the husband's household property because the woman could be counted on to dislike the rapist. But "he who achieves his end by persuasion," said the legislators, gained access not only to the woman's body but to her husband's storeroom.29

The mass of people was ignorant, driven by fashions, fads, and the tongues of orators...

evaded her, and she sensed they did not believe her

We can't make you do anything, but we can make you wish you had.

There is such a thing as the power of suggestion, however. One human mind is capable of being hypnotised or persuaded by another. We have faith, we have Hitler, we have advertising.

You lie well, and I appreciate the effort it takes. It's not so easy, as any commissar knows.

Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I know your mother lives in your head - almost everyone's mother does, I guess - but you can't let her have her way on this one

I am a firm believer in the 'Power of Persuasion.'Insomuch as, whatever you believe are your limitations, will become your limitation.

If you want people to dance to your tune, sing beautiful songs.