Quotes About Persuasion

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly—they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.

I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.

The wish of a beautiful woman is a law for the rest of the world.

Down below, amongst children, ice cream and chocolate are the bargaining chips supreme, as powerful as money and military force are amongst adults.

But it seemed to her that Mma Ramotswe needed persuading, and so she continued, "What else do you need in life, Mma? You have a fine husband—which is one of the most important things that anybody can have.

YOU DO NOT CHANGE PEOPLE BY SHOUTING AT THEM

Hate was a welcoming host and would always encourage you to join its parties.

Although she had only started being a detective, Precious was well aware that you had to be able to show people something if you wanted them to believe it.

It was far better to accept what had happened and make the best of it. It was also the case, he reflected, that Mma Ramotswe usually got her way. She was so nice about it, so disinclined to be insistent or pushy, but she usually got him to do what she wanted—and he was happy enough about that when all was said and done.

Psychology, she thought; that is what they called it these days, but in her view it was something much older than that. It was woman's knowledge, that was what it was; knowledge of how men behaved and how they could be persuaded to do something if one approached the matter in the right way.

Words! They seemed his only experience, his only sophistications. And yet what were they? Merciless little creatures, crowding about and eager for command, each with its own physical character, an ancestry, an expectation of life and a hope of posterity.

At Rome thing can or cannot be done when you are told anything cannot be done, there is an end of it. It is much more convenient at Paris; when anything cannot be done you pay double and it is done directly

Those who are coerced by force become our enemies, those who succumb to reason become our allies.

In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership.

Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus. I would rather be a man of conviction than a man of conformity.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

In order to "win a man to your cause," Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, "the great high road to his reason.

You can't show me an ad on TV with hard bodies and say I have to buy that car. You have to tell me why that car is better and safer than another car.

Words matter . . . They really do.

And, beside the innumerable purely subjective advantages, there are the rich objective rewards. A dream-picture brings no buyer, a dream-plan no dividends, a fantasied book is followed by no royalty statements. Crass as this may sound in a world which spends a great deal of its breath in persuading futilitarians that they have chosen the better part, it is the literal truth and stands for a truth still greater.

when an audience's emotions are engaged, that audience is more vulnerable to suggestion

Anyway, Hitler believed that the bigger the lie, the more audacious, the more likely it was to be believed. Because who'd imagine someone would have the nerve to spread such a colossal lie? And the more such a lie was repeated, the more likely it would be accepted as truth." Kelly paused. "But I need to stop talking now and let you think.

So your drug could at least loosen the grip of a cult leader on his followers?