Quotes About Persuasion

Selling makes many of us uncomfortable and even a bit disgusted ("ick," "yuck," "ugh"), in part because we believe that its practice revolves around duplicity, dissembling, and double-dealing.

But all of you are likely spending more time than you realize selling in a broader sense—pitching colleagues, persuading funders, cajoling kids. Like it or not, we're all in sales now.

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

when people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.

Indeed, there is evidence that people are more likely to be influenced by empty persuasive messages, such as commercials, when they are tired and depleted.

The evidence of priming studies suggests that reminding people of their mortality increases the appeal of authoritarian ideas, which may become reassuring in the context of the terror of death.

A compelling narrative fosters an illusion of inevitability.

My advice to students when I taught negotiations was that if you think the other side has made an outrageous proposal, you should not come back with an equally outrageous counteroffer, creating a gap that will be difficult to bridge in further negotiations. Instead you should make a scene, storm out or threaten to do so, and make it clear—to yourself as well as to the other side—that you will not continue the negotiation with that number on the table.

I think that if your approach is one where you don't want to alienate anybody, you're going to have to soften the viewpoint or the information that you're offering to such an extent that it doesn't have the power to make any difference. You have to take that risk.

Come out and say it, Zuckerberg - 'Our platform that influences billions of people is being used to propagandize left-wing viewpoints.'

What is illiberal is not persuasion but imposition of one's views.

Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best. Individuals on both sides of the issue passionately, but respectfully, attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views.

We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe that international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must also be willing to be persuaded by them.

Terrorist groups and their extremist state sponsors cannot be fought with kid gloves and flowery words of persuasion. As the U.S. has displayed in Afghanistan and in Iraq, only a vigilant and determined campaign of confrontation can deter and obstruct them.

As my Sicilian grandfather used to say, you get more flies with honey than with vinegar, right?

Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.

Proselytizing is only wrong if coercive or deceptive. Coercion, whether violent or not, is immoral, just as deception is immoral.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.

The virtue of gay equality has become increasingly recognized in the U.S. because people have been persuaded of its merits, not because state officials, acting like Inquisitors, forced people to accept it by punishing them for their refusal.

The reason you write something that is exciting and visceral is to force people to hear what you have to say, especially if you're in any kind of marginalized community where people don't want to listen. You have to come up with tricks to make them listen.

We can't convince people not to be self-destructive, because for now, the self-destruction serves them. What we can do is try to help them understand themselves better and show them how to ask themselves the right questions until something happens—either internally or externally—that leads them to do their own persuading.

There will be sway.

And a diplomatist is one who lets the other fellow think he's getting his way, while all the time he's having his own. It never does any special harm to let people have their way with their mouths.