Quotes About Persuasion

A trembling in the bones may carry a more convincing testimony than the dry, documented deductions of the brain.

Writing good editorials is chiefly telling the people what they think, not what you think.

Lawyers spend a great deal of time shovelling smoke.

The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.

Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way.

We must each find our separate meaning in the persuasion of our days until we meet in the meaning of the world.

Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.

Speeches are like steer horns - a point here, a point there, and a lot of bull in between.

The recipe for a good speech includes some shortening.

Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; but it it opinion that uses the force.

Oratory is the power to talk people out of their sober and natural opinions.

Glittering generalities! They are blazing ubiquities.

The object of oratory is not truth, but persuasion.

People don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

It is easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar.

The truly proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.

I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds.

'For example' is not proof.

I come from a State that raises corn and cotton and cock-leburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

Example has more followers than reason.

Nothing is so infectious as example.

Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.