Quotes About Persuasion

Men are apt to be much more influenced by words than by the actual facts of the surrounding reality

One man with conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions.

A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.

You can crush a man with journalism.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted.

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

The man who says to me, "Believe as I do, or God will damn you," will presently say, "Believe as I do, or I shall assassinate you."

The best way to manipulate a man is to make him think he is manipulating you.

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?. Of all the means I know to lead men, the most effectual is a concealed mystery.The hankering of the mind is irresistible.

The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.

The common man, no matter how sharp and tough, actually enjoys having the wool pulled over his eyes, and makes it easier for the puller.

The man molds the idol and then the idol molds the man.

Most men are not scolded out of their opinion.

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.

Tell people an invisible man in the sky created all things, they believe you. Tell them what you've painted is wet, they have to touch it to believe.

Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.

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.

One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas.

If you can really make a man believe you love him, you have won him; and if I could only make people really believe that God loves them, what a rush we would see for the kingdom of God!

It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe; you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.