Quotes About Persuasion

We were both dabbling with music but no, I persuaded George, railroaded him really into forming a band. I think we both had the belief that we would make it. That was the central pillar around everything else.

As probably is known, I did not want my husband to join politics. He was not keen to join politics. He was very happy as a pilot.

Life's a pitch, then you buy.

Don't forget that Rupert Murdoch has always regarded the Op Ed pages of 'The Wall Street Journal' - as he's said to me - as a cup of strong caffeine that gets you going in the morning and tells you what to think.

If you didn't want to believe in me, that's OK, because I'll make a believer out of you.

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.

The first step to believing something is true is wanting to believe it is true... or being afraid it is.

I wrote a post about wanting to buy a banjo - a $300 banjo, which is a lot of money, and I don't play instruments; I don't know anything about music. I like music, and I like banjos, and I think I probably heard Steve Martin playing, and I said, 'I could do that.' And I said to my husband, I said, 'Ben, can I buy a banjo?' And he's like, 'No.'

The human voice: It's the instrument we all play. It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably. It's the only one that can start a war or say 'I love you.' And yet many people have the experience that when they speak, people don't listen to them.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

Never blink while telling a tale. People will always believe you if you don't blink.

For a long while after her own divorce, Estelle had strongly urged Dorothy to follow suit. She had been particularly persistent, Dorothy thought, because she wanted the companionship of a similar destiny, as newly-married women want all their friends to be married, too. Or women newly become mothers, Dorothy remembered, who urge motherhood on others.

Come on Josie." He leaned closer and whispered in my ear, "I really want you there." "Yeah?" I asked, slamming my locker shut. "And do you always get what you want?" "Yes," he said.

The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons regard as a sacred fact – the lie that has been inculcated around a mother's knee – is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence.

In the new situation created by Hitler's war, Linlithgow was more successful at dividing Indians than Gandhi was in uniting them.

Sikh rajas of Patiala, Nabha, Jind and Kaithal—allies of the British even during the Anglo-Sikh wars—they required little persuasion.

Don't go thinking I was one of these hellfire-and-brimstone fellers. No, sir. I put more stock in Jesus than Jeremiah. And I never tried to tell a man Jesus really turned that wine into water, not the other way around. Just tried to persuade him that getting hog-drunk and killing his own brother wasn't Christian.

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

Philosophy cannot convince the bullet.

The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts…. If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. —GEORGE ORWELL, "POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE," 1946

Too many salesmen, I found, would make a good presentation and convince the client, but they couldn't recognize that critical moment when they should have stopped talking. If