Persuasion Quotes

A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey which catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the highroad to his reason.

One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas.

A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.

Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable, nothing so rough and uncultured as not to gain brilliance and refinement from eloquence.

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

Do your homework and know your facts, but remember it's passion that persuades.

Talk to the jury as though your client's fate depends on every word you utter.

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.

Leadership isn't just legislation, that it's a matter of persuading people and giving them confidence, and bringing them together and setting a tone.

Charm is a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without asking a clear question.

A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.

Persuasion is effected through the medium of the hearers, when they shall have been brought to a state of excitement under the influence of speech; for we do not, when influenced by pain or joy, or partiality or dislike, award our decisions in the same way; about which means of persuasion alone, I declare that the system-mongers of the present day busy themselves.

Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion

Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong ... And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.

You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust.

Sometimes all you need to do to win clever people over to a principle is to present it in the form of a shocking paradox.

If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

Delivers in such apt and gracious words that aged ears play truant at his tales; And younger hearings are quite ravished; So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.

My experience is that people are most likely to listen to reason when in bed.

The politician who once had to learn to flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate.

To make yourself understood to people, one must first speak to their eyes

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

Haply a woman's voice may do some goodWhen articles too nicely urged be stood on.

Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade the eyes of men without an orator.

I try to get people to see what I have. . . . When you run a computer company, you have to get people to buy into your dreams.

The aim of forensic oratory is to teach, to delight, to move.

The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.

Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.

First you win the argument, then you win the vote.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

When two people meet, as long as there is any form of rapport maintained, the person with the most certainty will eventually influence ther other person.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of theothers. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.

I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.

Give me a few minutes to talk away my face and I can seduce the Queen of France.

Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.

To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.

Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.

For it is not true, as some treatise-mongers lay down in their systems, of the probity of the speaker, that it contributes nothing to persuasion; but moral character nearly, I may say, carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in making credible.

Learn the language that they understand, and when they come upon our doorstep to talk we can talk, and they will get the point. There will be a dialog, there will be some communication, and I am quite certain that then there will be some understanding.

I care so deeply about this matter that I'm willing to take on the legal penalties, to sit in this prison cell, to sacrifice my freedom, in order to show you how deeply I care. Because when you see the depth of my concern, and how civil I am in going about this, you're bound to change your mind about me, to abandon your rigid, unjust position, and to let me help you see the truth of my cause.

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

[M]ere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion.

A man in the wrong may more easily be convinced than one half right.

Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.

A speaker who is attempting to move people to thought or action must concern himself with Pathos.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.