Quotes About Persuasion

Most people trying to win others to their way of thinking do too much talking themselves. Let the other people talk themselves out. They know more about their business and problems than you do. So ask them questions. Let them tell you a few things.

Sometimes we want something to be true so badly that we convince ourselves that it is true.

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Like the boy who cried wolf, or the football coach whose pep talks wear thin, the pope or president who turns every cause into a holy one, every enemy into a Hitler, every conflict into a genocide, may soon find his audience rolling its eyes and sinking into the very cynicism he hopes to surmount.

Convencer es infructuoso.

American colleges and universities are propaganda machines

Steve has a reality distortion field." When Hertzfeld looked puzzled, Tribble elaborated. "In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he's not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.

Socrates' method of building an argument through gentle queries, he "dropped my abrupt contradiction" style of argument and "put on the humbler enquirer" of the Socratic method. By asking what seemed to be innocent questions, Franklin would draw people into making concessions that would gradually prove whatever point he was trying to assert.

Steve's head dropped and stared at his feet. After a weighty, uncomfortable pause, he issued a challenge that would haunt me for days. Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world? Sculley felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. There was no response possible other than to acquiesce. He had a uncanny ability to always get what he wanted, to size up a person and know exactly what to say to reach a person, Sculley recalled.

Customers don't know what they want until we've shown them.

People with the halo effect seem to know exactly what they're doing and, moreover, make you want to admire them for it.

People don't know what they want until you show it to them.

Like many entrepreneurs, Bushnell had no shame about distorting reality in order to motivate people.

There can be something he knows absolutely nothing about, and because of his crazy style and utter conviction, he can convince people that he knows what he's talking about

that the sodas in the office refrigerator be replaced by Odwalla organic orange and carrot juices, someone on the team had T-shirts made. "Reality Distortion

Clara, however, loved San Francisco, and in 1952 she convinced her husband to move back there.

veteran colleagues at Apple used to call his "reality distortion field." Sometimes it was the inadvertent misfiring of memory

Don't worry about people stealing an idea," he once told a student. "If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Let me speak to your boss I said. Six magic words that roil deep in the bowels of anymore collecting a paycheck on a biweekly basis. It's like winking at a leprechaun: he has to give up his pot of gold, and yet no one knows why.

It is ill arguing against anything from its misuse.

It is wonderful how people's judgment is blinded by their passions, and how apt we are to find plausible and even satisfactory reasons, for doing what our interest, or that of the party we have embraced, strongly recommends.

The best way to reduce opponents' overconfidence and make them open to your position might seem to be an overwhelming argument that shows them why they are wrong and why you are right. Sometimes that works, but only rarely. What usually works better is to ask questions—in particular, to ask opponents for reasons. Questions are often more powerful than assertions.

Cynicism results from unrealistic expectations. If we expect an argument to be a knock-down proof that convinces everyone immediately on first hearing, then we are bound to be disappointed. Almost no arguments work like that. If we trim our expectations to make them more realistic, and if we are patient enough to wait for effects that take a while instead of demanding immediate capitulation, then we will find that reasons and arguments can have some influence.

does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? He replied, 'All poets believe that it does. And in ages of imagination, this firm persuasion removed mountains; But many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.'" — from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake