Quotes About Persuasion

People of similar political persuasions tend to flock together.

Fun without sell gets nowhere but sell without fun tends to become obnoxious.

I research every possible bit of information I can find. Then I use about a tenth of it. But I have to know all the information first; otherwise, I'm not going to convince myself, and if I can't convince myself, then I'm not going to convince the reader.

My gift, if that's not too grandiose a term, is one for describing novels, biographies, and works of history in such a way that people want to read them.

I have always thought it was a terrible shame that the women's movement didn't realise how much easier it was to reach people by making them laugh than by shaking a fist and saying, 'Don't you see how oppressed you are?'

It's a terrible thing to speak well and be wrong.

If you ask anybody at Microsoft, could they spend more money, all of them would say yes. They should say that! They should say, 'Yes, I have so many terrific innovative, interesting, awesomely impactful ideas that you have to get me more money.' I love that. I love that energy, and I listen to some really fascinating arguments.

What is terrifying is the ability, through mass brainwashing or propaganda, to change normal human instinct, which does not necessarily contain very much hatred.

One problem was that my direct testimony was in writing, so a lot of people didn't get to see it. I hope they see it, because I think it built a very strong case.

Good communications have done more to win wars throughout history than well-armed battalions.

Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds.

He could probably have persuaded even Cerberus to leave his post and go off in search of a few dog biscuits.

Doing what comes naturally was (and is) no longer the appropriate response in many circumstances that arose in what had become an unnatural environment. It became the major social role of religion to bridge the gap between a human nature developed for one environment and the altered environment in which that nature now had to operate. People had to be persuaded to act unnaturally, as Jesus and other religious prophets would preach.

Two books of essays also appeared – Essays in Persuasion (1931) and Essays in Biography (1933). The first collected what Keynes, in his introduction, called 'the croakings of twelve years – the croakings of a Cassandra who could never influence the course of events in time'. A notable feature of the second is Keynes's use of short lives of men of science to ponder and delineate the character of scientific genius.

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

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the people you need to concentrate on.

One of my art teachers used to say that the frame is as important as the picture. In persuasion, it can be even more important-the triumph of form over content.

It's so effective, in fact, that we often embrace the further shortcut of assuming that people who simply display symbols of authority should be listened to. Studies show that Americans are particularly susceptible to three types of authority symbols: titles, clothing, and luxury cars.1

This supports what advertisers have been saying for years: "The more facts you tell, the more you sell., ,7

and straightforward language. The researchers concluded that when the witness spoke simply the jurors could evaluate his argument on its merits. But when he was unintelligible, they had to resort to the mental shortcut of accepting his title and reputation in lieu of comprehensible facts. And so, another paradox: experts are sometimes most convincing when we don't understand what they're talking about.

the best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

What's more, when we recount an experience to someone, the act of recounting it changes the memory of it. So if we reshape the story a bit each time—omitting inconvenient facts, exaggerating convenient ones—we can, over time, transform our actual belief about what happened. Which presumably makes it easier to convince others that our story is true.