Quotes About Persuasion

A propagandist doesn't have to know what he is talking about, just so he talks convincingly

You say a thing so often and so well that after a time everyone believes it. Even, finally, yourself.

You could sometimes guide people's opinions, but if they didn't want to buy what you had to sell you could shout yourself hoarse trying to make them do it and it would never work.

Maybe if they didn't tell you the stories ... they'd actually go out and do it.

I've changed my mind, and when we're finished, Victoria, you won't remember your own name... let alone Viogets. ~ Max

Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.

Are you trying to bribe me?" "Only if it works

when a man blends truth and falsehood skillfully in one comprehensive statement, it is difficult to tell the veracities from the fibs.

No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.

I do think all good and evil comes from words. I have to tune myself into a good temper with something musical, and I run to a book as a child to its mother.

No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes... ....Tories, Liberal Party and Labour Party for what do they battle except their own prestige - No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes....Tories, Liberal Party and Labour Party for what do they battle except their own prestige

When an arguer argues dispassionately, he thinks only of the argument, and the reader cannot help thinking of the argument too. If he had written dispassionately...had used indisputable proofs to establish his argument and had shown no trace of wishing that the result should be one would thing rather than another, one would not have been angry either. One would have accepted the fact as one accepts that a pea is green or a canary yellow.

No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. (...) It is not love of truth but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes parish desire the downfall of parish. Each seeks peace of mind and subserviency rather than the triumph of truth and the exaltation of virtue.

In the good old days, by merely twisting fat Valechka's brittle wrist (the one she had fallen upon from a bicycle) I could make her change her mind instantly;

am quite willing to admit that they are also a deception but right now I believe in them so much that I infect them with truth.

Oh, to shout it so that all of you believe me at last, you cruel, smug people...

I am a strict vegetarian...The usual questions were fired at me about eggnogs and milkshakes being or not being acceptable to one of my persuasion. Shade said that with him it was the other way around: he must make a definite effort to partake of a vegetable. Beginning a salad, was to him like stepping into sea water on a chilly day, and he had always to brace himself in order to attack the fortress of an apple.

You can fool some of the people some of the time -- and that's enough to make a decent living.

Truthful words are not beautiful beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive persuasive words are not good.

Selling bullshit to a guy who peddled it for a living was no easy task. – Dylan

By contrast, the growth of Christianity in its first three centuries, the most crucial period, was largely by a combination of the power of persuasion, whether in preaching, intellectual argument, "miracles" exhibiting the power of Jesus' name, and simply the moral suasion of Christian behavior, including martyrdom. Granted,

He fishes well who uses a golden hook.

Since the ask is an "emotional firecracker" with emotions running quite high, it is important to drill down and see how important your tone of voice is when you ask. While the selection of your words when you make your ask is incredibly important, as you will see in the later chapters, my expression is "Your tone is as important as your words.

Remember, your tone is your superpower. It can invite people to hear more and say yes to your ask, or it can turn them off, and your ask will fizzle away.