Quotes About Persuasion

In the end, a gun is an instrument to make someone surrender to your will or die, and music is exactly the opposite - it's seductive and invitational.

Maybe it's the TV commercials. They make you hate everything they try to sell. God, they must think the public is a halfwit. Every time some jerk in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck holds up some toothpaste or a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of beer or a mouthwash or a jar of shampoo or a little box of something that makes a fat wrestler smell like mountain lilac I always make note never to buy any. Hell, I wouldn't buy the product even if I liked it.

No estoy dispuesto a hablar, Eddie. ¿Por qué iba a hacerlo? Dejó la pistola sobre el escritorio y la golpeó con la mano abierta. - Esto -dijo-. Y yo podría hacer que le resultara provechoso. - Ya, eso suena mejor. No meta la pistola en este asunto. Yo siempre estoy dispuesto a escuchar el sonido del dinero.

Josie walked slowly toward the jury. She stood close as if she was

I)n order to refute a conclusion, you have to put forth the best possible argument for it. (p. 158)

The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.

He described his grand strategy as indirection. If General Motors hired Joe Schmo to sell cars, Joe Schmo would give an interview to Road & Track, telling them the specs of the Thunderbird, engine size in cubic inches, zero-to-sixty, and so on. Given the same job, Bernays would lobby Congress for higher speed limits, making it more fun to own a Thunderbird. Rather than fight for a single season of sales, he would make the world more friendly to his product.

Your damned nonsense can I stand twice or once, but sometimes always, my God, never. Svatislav Richter, to the second flute at Covent Garden PEOPLE HAVE THOUGHT prose style many things—persuasion or mere music, duty or pastime, ornament only, the man himself. It has been left for Americans to think it a problem: the National Problem, the Communications Problem.

Bigwig: I can't think why he didn't convince Threarah. Hazel: Because Threarah doesn't like anything he hasn't thought of for himself.

Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.

Those who control what young people are taught, and what they experience – what they see, hear, think, and believe – will determine the future course for the nation.

The faithful are encouraged to profess belief, whether they are convinced by it or not. Maybe if you repeat something often enough, you will succeed in convincing yourself of its truth.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him sing opera.

you want to nudge people into socially desirable behavior, do not, by any means, let them know that their current actions are better than the social norm.

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to.

I don't think I really believe in paradise, Carl. You want to know the truth, I don't think any of us do really. Deep down, down where it counts, I think we all know it's a crock of shit. That's why we're all so fucking determined to spread the good news, to shove it down other people's throats. Because if we can't make other people believe it, how are we going to stamp out the doubt in ourselves. And it's cold, that doubt.

People seem to be awfully gullible. They'll believe anything. ~in The NPR Intreviews, 1996, edited by Robert Siegel

If you're that clever you can argue yourself into anything.

If you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention.

An element of propaganda, of sales and marketing, always intervened between the inner and the outer person.

I'd read somewhere that if you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention.

He was too clever. If you're that clever you can argue yourself into anything. You just leave common sense behind.

I'd read somewhere that if you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention.

While Nigel chattered away about the ghoulish features of dying which interested him, I grew melancholy at the half-finished things which a death persuades you to focus on.