Persuasion Quotes

The author found participants in a study able to come up with more reasons to support their position but not anymore likely to change their minds based on contradictory evidence. In effect, they enlist their IQ on behalf of their instincts.

Although Martin Luther's theological message was couched as an exhortation to all Christian people, his frame of reference, the human experiences on which he drew and his emotional sympathies, or almost entirely German.

He did what good lawyers always do. He shifted his argument in the direction his audience was already going.

Power and influence: things that should be obtained not for means of greed, nor pride, nor ego, but rather to ensure that in the right moment, when your wisdom and benevolence are required to keep humanity strong and united, you can deliver and orchestrate others toward the greater good.

When you give people a choice, they believe they have power.

Most people would instantly start feeling ten years older if someone were to convince them that they were actually born a decade before their birthdate.

If "facts" convinced people of things, no one would have sex

the battle for our culture must be waged at the level of the imagination.

Part of my wisdom consists of being a whiz at reminding the dumb, why they should be whizzes, and not just live life to whiz by others.

What separates us into engineers and robots, puppeteers and puppets, kings and pawns, is not the status we hold at any given time among others - status is irrelevant; it is the level of ever-present awareness we have of a grey-matter tailor's tools [of flattery, persuasion, and cunning.]

Woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference ... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm.

Teddy White lamented that TV might spell the death of serious politics: to give a thoughtful response to serious questions, politician needed a good thirty seconds to ponder, but television allowed only five seconds of silence at best. DDB (ad men) found nothing to lament and the fact. They were convinced you could learn everything you needed to KNOW about a product, which in this case happens to be a human being, in half a minute – the speed not of thought but of emotion.

Lewis at his best is about trying on ways of looking at the world.

The quality of the problem that is found is a forerunner of the quality of the solution that is attained. It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship, that often sets the creative person apart from others in his field.

He seemed to believe that indignation was a sufficient guardian.

A candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman.

I don't need to see the trail to know you're at the end of it. My grandfather's compass may not work, but mine is still true.

When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme, to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

You can LOBBY anyone. It is the great equalizer." – Chief of Staff Russell Jackson

The task of defending capitalism was still important to leave to the capitalists.

Horace Greeley pursues temperance to extravagance." Lord Acton

In politics, if you're explaining, you're loosing.