Quotes About Persuasion

There's an old Internet adage that as soon as you compare something to the Nazis you lose the argument.

The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog's tail wags to communicate. You can't make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can't change people's minds by utterly refuting their arguments.

You could harbor a man in your bed or your body, play on his nervous system like Paderewski at the keyboard, and not shift his brain one inch out of the concrete of dogma. (p. 5)

I'm not better than anyone, and I'm not trying to convince people to live by my standards of what's right. I'm trying to convince them to live by their own.

And you can't force someone to believe, not even with better and louder and more virtuous arguments, not even with irrefutable evidence

There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to.

You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation

Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.

Motivar no consiste en conseguir que el otro haga lo que yo quiero, sino en lograr que el otro quiera hacer lo que yo quiero".

He had recorded in canto 8 how Plato the Idealist 'went to Dionysius of Syracuse | Because he had observed that tyrants | Were most efficient in all that they set their hands to'; but had he taken the point of the story, that Plato found 'he was unable to persuade Dionysius to any amelioration'?

Rappelez-vous que ce qu'on appelle une faible volonté est habituellement un signe de manque d'intérêt. La personne faible qui est facilement persuadée de jouer au tennis quand elle n'en a aucun désir est une personne qui n'a aucune idée de ce qui l'intéresse réellement. Un système disciplinaire encourage une telle personne à rester faible de volonté et futile. (p. 432)

Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

This is what fundamentalist love to do. They persuade themselves that they have "God's absolute point of view" and that their mission is to bring everyone else into line "with their God." In so doing, they become the Catholic Taliban and justify their "moral terrorism" as somehow required by God himself. This is why, as shown above, Pope Francis calls them "godless.

If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.

So I smiled and began to talk in what I hoped was a genial and friendly voice, but as soon as I started I could hear resonances of my teacher tones: informative, seeking to persuade, holding things back. I pressed on. I was a teacher, that was what I was. I was unfulfilled.

You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument. —WILL ROGERS

If Helen had the face that launched a thousand ships, Kelly would have made those guys invent aircraft carriers.

Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they're arguing.

As Harry Truman used to say: "If you can't convince them, confuse them.