Quotes About Persuasion

The joke is mightier than the sword.

Our swords shall play the orators for us.

Those who reason most powerfully and are the most successful at ordering their thoughts so as to make them clear and intelligible will always be best able to persuade others of what they say, even if they speak in the thickest of dialects

Finally, if there be still persons who are not sufficiently persuaded of the existence of God and of the soul, by the reasons I have adduced, I am desirous that they should know that all the other propositions, of the truth of which they deem themselves perhaps more assured, as that we have a body, and that there exist stars and an earth, and such like, are less certain;

Those who possess the strongest reasoning and who best order their thoughts in order to make them clear and intelligible can always best persuade others of what they are proposing, even if they were to speak only Low Breton and had never learned rhetoric.

You know, that idea could be developed into a first-rate little article. Six hundred to seven hundred words, about. The Tyranny of the Wheel, you could call it, with a colored margin of trains and airplanes and ocean liners at top speed—of course liners don't have wheels, but you could do something about that—if I could persuade you, Mr. Wolfe—

Such is the ability of man to believe in what at any time he finds it convenient to believe, they may actually have convinced themselves that they were speaking the truth.

The arguments themselves did not appear to me to be any better simply because they were better expressed; eloquence did not make them true." St. Augustine page 85

Faith is a choice; anyone who says otherwise is trying to convert you.

Come on, old duck," he coaxed.

The power of a good idea is that it convinces people to change their behaviour themselves – no physical coercion is required. Do it right, and they'll even think it was their own idea.

Lord, will you send me with such an unbelieving heart to persuade others to believe? Must I daily plead with sinners about everlasting life and everlasting death, and have no more belief or feeling of these weighty things myself? Oh send me not naked and unprovided to the work; but, as you command me to do it, furnish me with a spirit suitable thereto." Prayer

A leader is someone who can effectively exercise his influence on people that he can make them believe something he wants them to believe.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.

a nudge is any factor that significantly alters the behavior of Humans

Single biggest influence on what a body will or won't believe is what nearby bodies broadcast over the public band. Get three people in the room and they'll decide that the law of gravity is evil and should be rescinded because one of their uncles got shit-faced and fell off the roof.

The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.

Nothing has more power than simple conviction.

His words of thanks contain four of the top six releasers for producing action patterns in someone else: reciprocity, scarcity, validation, and appeal to commitment. He hides the evidence of his begging under another trick gleaned from Chapter 12: If you want a person to help you, convince them that they've already helped you beyond saying. People will work hard to protect their legacy.

Courthouses are good and necessary first half of life institutes. In the second half, you try instead to influence events, work for change, quietly persuade, change your own attitude, pray or forgive instead of taking things to court.

The message is that people are more likely to agree with you when they have already said something positive.

researchers discovered that people who have just consumed caffeinated drinks were more likely to be swayed by arguments about various controversial topics.55 In short, good evidence that there really is no such thing as a free lunch or an innocent cup of coffee.

In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words: from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.

THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD!!!!