Quotes About Persuasion

Right from the beginning, I had the sense that whenever he was trying to convince Pin of something, he was really trying to convince himself.

A long list of propositions does not necessarily make a coherent argument

I]t is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion. We neither have authority granted us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice.

He is one of those orators of whom it was well said, "Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said.

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time.

Good and upstanding people must be persuaded by gentle means,' Napoleon would later write. 'The rabble must be moved by terror.

I think one of the mistakes many of us (including myself) make when speaking with atheists, agnostics, or any person who does not share our faith is to believe that we can argue them into seeing the truth. I do not believe this is possible. I have never known anyone who was successfully argued into a true, lasting faith.

But Tony, though he had never heard of the word attrition, had great faith in his own powers of wearing down his mother's resistance. He had found by long experience that if one asked for a thing often enough, simply ignoring rebuffs and refusals, one could usually get what one wanted.

The subject of money was not mentioned again at the time, but when Miss Todd began going to Mrs Morland as secretary, she insisted on having an account from Dr Ford, much to his annoyance. He persuaded, he blustered, he was almost pathetic, but Miss Todd stood firm. All he could do was talk to her in her front garden instead of in her drawing-romm, and put her fees, which she luckily paid in cash, into his safe, in an envelope marked Property of Miss Anne Todd left with me for safe keeping.

A man doesn't know what he thinks until a woman makes him think it.

If a person seems inflexible, yield, then slip in sideways and get what you want.

My mother was against me being an actress - until I introduced her to Frank Sinatra.

The trouble with good manners is that people are persuaded that you are all right, require no protection, are perfectly capable of looking after yourself.

Getting her team onside was a piece of piss. Who needed management training?

It's hard to say exactly what it is about face-to-face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology.

I sense very little appetite for green efforts to persuade people to accept a frozen or declining standard of living for the sake of the environment. Recessions remind us that economic retreat or stagnation is painful, whatever the goal.

Lying is a cooperative act. Think about it. A lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.

For myself, I think that those who cultivate wisdom and believe themselves able to instruct their fellow-citizens as to their interests are least likely to become partisans of violence. They are too well aware that to violence attach enmities and dangers, whereas results as good may be obtained by persuasion safely and amicably.

Obviously I am a photographer and I believe in my medium: I do think that powerful photographs can force change. It doesn't take long to look and be engaged in a strong image whereas, with a story, you have to actually sit down and pause and be involved in it.

I think women are much more open to new ideas but approach a line more from a more personal and skeptical place - you need to seduce them into your clothes, whereas most men just like to be told what they should be wearing. Women are a bit like cats and men like dogs in that respect when it comes to clothes.

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.

One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true of false. It comes to be dominating thought in one's mind.

When you say 'I want to be an inspiring leader,' the operative phrase is 'I want.' This is inherently me-centered and self serving whether or not you recognise it. What you are really saying is 'I want to get people to do what I would like them to.' Perhaps they don't want to do that. So you have to somehow get them there.