Quotes About Persuasion

The one undeniable talent that talking heads have is their skill at telling a compelling story with conviction, and that is enough.

En cambio, Jesucristo nunca obligó a nadie a creer en él. Prefería actuar por medio de la atracción, sacando a los humanos de sí mismos para atraerlos hacia él.

Democracy requires us to recognize others' rights even when we fundamentally disagree with them. It requires a civility in which I respect a person's ultimate worth and seek to persuade but not to coerce.

Democracy requires us to recognize others' rights even when we fundamentally disagree with them. It requires a civility in which I respect a person's ultimate worth and seek to persuade but not to coerce. For this reason modern democracy grew out of Christian soil. We must exercise the skill of ethical surgeons in deciding which moral principles apply to society at large and how best to apply them.

One should never offend more men than one can persuade

He had that York gift, didn't he?" he presses me. "Of making people love him? Like your father King Edward did? Like you have? It's a blessing, there's no real sense to it. It's just that some men have a charm, don't they? And then people follow them? People just follow them?

D'you think I can't write this and get someone-a drunk married to a fool -to swear to it? Do you think I can't sey up as historian? As storyteller? D'you think I can't write a history which years from now everyone will believe as the truth? I am the king. Who shall write the record of my reign if not me? 'You can say anything you like' I say levelly. 'Of course you can. You're King of England. But it doesn't make it true.

They just won't listen," and

But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.

there is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not from the truth.

Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls--they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man.

So when the orator is more convincing than the doctor, what happens is that an ignorant person is more convincing than the expert before an equally ignorant audience.

What you should do, said Socrates, is to say a magic spell over him every day until you have charmed his fears away.

I do not know, men of Athens, how my accusers affected you; as for me, I was almost carried away in spite of myself, so persuasively did they speak. And yet, hardly anything of what they said is true.

Arguments, like men, are often pretenders.

A rhetorician is capable of speaking effectively against all comers, whatever the issue, and can consequently be more persuasive in front of crowds about… anything he likes.

Then, when the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge?—is not that the inference?

Isn't there still one other possibility ... ," I said, "our persuading you that you must let us go?

a los dioses y nobles monarcas persuaden los dones

How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who I was—so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth.

And the same will be true of the orator and the oratory in relation to all other arts. The orator need have no knowledge of the truth about thongs; it is enough for him to have discovered a knack of persuading the ignorant that he seems to know more than the experts.

For the uneducated, when they engage in argument about anything, give no thought to the truth about the subject of discussion but are only eager that those present will accept the position they have set forth. I differ from them only to this extent: I shall not be eager to get the agreement of those present that what I say is true, except incidentally, but I shall be very eager that I should myself be thoroughly convinced that things are so.

for the uneducated, when they engage in argument about anything, give no thought to the truth about the subject of discussion but are only eager that those present will accept the position they have set forth.

Y si al que está en esas condiciones se le acerca alguien y le dice tranquilamente la verdad, esto es, que no hay en él razón alguna, que está privado de ella y que la razón es algo que no se puede adquirir sin entregarse completamente a la tarea de conseguirla, ¿crees que es fá­cil que haga caso quien está sometido a tantas malas in­fluencias?