Quotes About Convincing

#1. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned quartos fail to do so.

Anthony Trollope

#2. What's invaluable about actually going to the places you want to write about are the random accidental things that happen. Random, accidental detail is the best way to make a setting convincing. You can of course invent your own random details, and sometimes I will also mash up real incidents.

Zachary Lazar

#3. That's the problem with fiction - or the charm, if you want. Even mediocre plots have a way of sinking their hooks into you, until you find yourself concerned for the fates of characters who aren't even fully convincing.

Charles McGrath

#4. What is so inspiring about [Louis] Brandeis's writing is he saw it as a tool for democratic education. He would say things like the opinion is now convincing, now can we make it more instructive, after he'd gone through ten drafts.

Jeffrey Rosen

#5. The notion that as a man grows older his illusions leave him is not quite true. What is true is that his early illusions are supplanted by new, and to him, equally convincing illusions.

George Jean Nathan

#6. President Bush has consistently used rhetoric, and that is not convincing given his past record.

Grace Napolitano

#7. Once I looked into a mirror at my face I felt like it was completely convincing. I was Salieri.

F. Murray Abraham

#8. Before we understood science, it was natural to believe that God created the universe, but now science offers a more convincing explanation." "What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is we would know everything that God would know if there was a God, but there isn't. I'm an atheist.

Stephen Hawking

#9. She gave me the big freeze when I said hello that day, though. I had a helluva time convincing her that I didn't give a good goddam where her dog relieved himself. He could do it in the living room, for all I cared.

J.D. Salinger

#10. What convinces is not necessarily true-it is merely convincing: a note for asses.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#11. The child trying not to appear as a child, of the strenuousness with which she tried to present the face of a convincing adult.

Joan Didion

#12. Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time.

Walt Disney Company

#13. The closer you get to reality, the harder it is to make it look convincing to the audience. That's why I tend to make things [films] that are a little bit more caricature.

John Lasseter

#14. The Jews emerge into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives fragmentary but convincing evidence.

James T. Shotwell

#15. It is though we had wanted to add to the already existing proofs of God's Existence, a new and finally convincing one: the universal destruction that follows on assuming God's non-existence.

Wilhelm Ropke

#16. So much was so easy. Glamour was second nature. It was just making folk see what they wanted to see. Fooling folk was as simple as singing. Tricking folk and telling lies, it was like breathing.
But this? Convincing someone of the truth that they were too twisted to see? How could you even begin?

Patrick Rothfuss

#17. Convincing yourself doesn't win an argument.

Robert Half

#18. Elegance is the perfect disguise for our violent nature - a mask so convincing that we often fool ourselves the moment we don it.

Ashim Shanker

#19. There is no such thing as a convincing argument, although every man thinks he has one.

E.W. Howe

#20. I've been telling anyone willing to listen that banks have a tendency to sit on time bombs while convincing themselves that they are conservative and nonvolatile.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#21. The art of writing is the same as the art of convincing a teacher that you really did do your homework or you studied something that you didn't. It's the art of lying convincingly and it's amazing how much you can learn from a little.

Neil Gaiman

#22. What I like about music is its ability to be convincing, to carry an argument through successfully to the finish, though the terms of the argument remain unknown quantities.

John Ashbery

#23. There is no such thing as motivation in my world. I am not motivated to do what I do. As an artist, I am driven, I am compelled, I am thrust forward by a force so rooted inside me, so convincing, that it seems futile to try to explain it. Although it has a name: passion.

Philippe Petit

#24. [Our errors] represent a moment of alienation, both from ourselves and from a previously convincing vision of the world. But what's wrong with that? "To alienate" means to make unfamiliar; and to see things - including ourselves - as unfamiliar is an opportunity to see them anew.

Kathryn Schulz

#25. The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.

John Hughes

#26. And since a more convincing argument could not be found - aside from a fatal accident or suicide - this way was chosen: a process of galloping senescence.

Mircea Eliade

#27. You wouldn't. You're an aberration," he said. "How do I know you won't kill us all anyway?" I said. "You're the one I need to feed to the fire," he said. "Drop the gun and you can save this girl." "Not terribly convincing," I said, stalling for time, hoping for that time to bring something.

Jeff Lindsay

#28. I don't think I make a very convincing dude. I think I look more like a lumberjack lesbian with an eating disorder than a kick-ass drag king.

Cherie Priest

#29. When I was 12, I got a manager, but my mom was against it. It took a lot of convincing. But when I got a job at Manhattan Theatre Club, I think she saw how passionate I was about it and that I worked really hard - and now she's super supportive.

Nicola Peltz

#30. I love convincing a reader that an unusual or seemingly ordinary subject is worth his or her time - it's part of the fun for me as a writer.

Susan Orlean

#31. Mont Blanc confronted us, dazzling, immense, cut sharp out of the bue sky; more prosterous than the most baroque wedding cake, more convincing than the best photograph. It fairly took my breath away. It made me want to laugh.

Christopher Isherwood

#32. My homosexuality remained at that point purely theoretical, an untested hypothesis. But it was a hypothesise so thorough and so convincing I saw no reason not to share it immediately.

Alison Bechdel

#33. It seems all spirits need theatrics, eh? Even Christ himself requires incense and holy water. We're a skeptical people. We need convincing.

Megan Chance

#34. When i tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.

William Blake

#35. The Abrahamic God's greatest achievement was convincing us he is not the Devil.

Priscilla Vogelbacher

#36. History is not a catalogue but ... a convincing version of events.

A.J.P. Taylor

#37. I'm in favor of any form of sexual relationship that gives pleasure to those involved. And I have never heard a convincing argument to the contrary.

Gore Vidal

#38. Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.

Don McCullin

#39. Any talented decadent can make unreality believable. To make reality convincing is another matter, a matter for only the greatest masters.

Kenneth Rexroth

#40. The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation ... There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease.

Robert S. Mendelsohn

#41. Selling is never about convincing. It is always about helping.

Mark Cuban

#42. My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

Karen Thompson Walker

#43. A candidate who tries to steer a path down the middle in an effort to 'win independents' runs the risk of convincing everyone that they have no core values. As much as - or more than - any other voters, independents want to see conviction and authenticity.

John Sununu

#44. Progress and Poverty was the most closely knit, fascinating, and convincing specimen of argumentation that, I believe, ever sprang from the mind of man.

Scott Brooks

#45. I have a definite talent for convincing people to try something new. I am a good salesman. When I'm on form, I can sell anything.

Brian Eno

#46. The kiss he laid on her was caring, tender, and forgiving, and the kiss she gave back was convincing, trusting, and fiery with love.

Lisa Gillis

#47. Exhausting someone in argument is not the same as convincing him

Tim Kreider

#48. Poetry, I thought then, and still do, is a matter of space on the page interrupted by a few well-chosen words, to give them importance. Prose is a less grand affair which has to stretch to the edges of the page to be convincing.

Fay Weldon

#49. Illusions can be very convincing. No one has any reason to suspect that I am anything less than what I appear.

Maggi Myers

#50. I recalled something I'd read a long time ago about Satan. When he appeared, it wouldn't be as a demon but as an ordinary-looking guy with a convincing message of peace.

Steven Ramirez

#51. I don't think that experience is a very useful or convincing attribute for a sensible foreign policy. Henry Kissinger had a lot of experience.

Noam Chomsky

#52. Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.

Vikram Seth

#53. When an entire group of people come together and try to make some kind of identity out of what they don't have, they usually end up convincing themselves they can do whatever they damn well please.

Christopher Rice

#54. Max Planck, surveying his own career in his Scientific Autobiography, sadly remarked that "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."8

Thomas S. Kuhn

#55. I tried to look confused, which is one of my most convincing expressions.

Rick Riordan

#56. To create a free society is not to accomplish the impossible task of convincing all people to abandon aggression, but to accomplish the essential task of convincing enough people to abandon the belief that aggression is ever legitimate.

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

#57. After a victim is made to participate in an act of evil, the people in charge put a lot of energy into convincing the child or adult that he or she is evil and a perpetrator rather than a victim.p324

Alison Miller

#58. Traditionally, common social location meant that the two partners used the same family name. In recent years alternative patterns of naming have been developed, for reasons which are more convincing to feminists than they are to genealogists or to mail carriers.

John Howard Yoder

#59. The only way I was allowed to play was by convincing bands to let me do a few songs while they set up. That went on for years.

Beck

#60. I don't care about convincing the people who think I'm naive or an idiot. I'm interested in how do I inspire the people who are open-minded that there's a different way of seeing the world.

Simon Sinek

#61. Our success as consultants will depend upon the essential rightness of the advice we give and our capacity for convincing those in authority that it is good.

Andrew Thomas

#62. In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics.

H. G. Bissinger

#63. Convincing a leader of the value of front-line ideas alone is rarely enough for that person to overcome years of entrenched bad habits and to change his management style.

Dean M. Schroeder

#64. The life of a character should be an unbroken line of events and emotions, but a play only gives us a few moments on that line - we must create the rest to portray a convincing life.

Constantin Stanislavski

#65. It would be difficult to write a convincing ghost story set on a sunny day in a big city.

Susan Hill

#66. The more comprehensive and convincing a debt reduction program is, the less likely it is to fail. And remember, just as Germany is grateful to America for the Marshall Plan, Italy would be grateful to Germany for helping it lower its refinancing costs.

George Soros

#67. My position was simple, really. I didn't care about her past. It changed nothing in my feelings for her. She was the one-the one person I needed to be with. Now it was just a matter of convincing her of this fact. And I will ... because I love her.

Raine Miller

#68. Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or 'outsideness' without laying stress on the emotion of fear.

H.P. Lovecraft

#69. Of all liars, the smoothest and most convincing is memory

Harlan Ellison

#70. It's sad that he doesn't know why I didn't respond to his seedy nightclub-owner gestures; it's sad that I end up convincing myself somehow that the man capable of making them is a significant and valuable figure in my life.

Nick Hornby

#71. He was determined to stick with his plan, convincing himself to stay neutral and detached. That's the plan!
Then she leaned over him.

Madison Thorne Grey

#72. Art is a spiritual practice. If it weren't for art, I'd have given up on God a long time ago. This cathedral though....is very convincing.

Janice Macleod

#73. I do not have, nor do I believe I have seen, a vision capacious and convincing enough to propound as an organizing principle for the next phase in the law of our Constitution.

Laurence Tribe

#74. Most people's major life changes don't come from reading an article in the newspaper; they come from reading longer-form essays or thoughtful books, which are much more convincing and detailed.

Aaron Swartz

#75. Every one of us is different in some way, but for those of us who are more different, we have to put more effort into convincing the less different that we can do the same thing they can, just differently.

Marlee Matlin

#76. Epaminondas himself fell in the moment of victory, and in his death contributed not the least of his lessons to subsequent generations-by an exceptionally dramatic and convincing proof that an army and a state succumb quickest to paralysis of the brain.

B.H. Liddell Hart

#77. The message of 'Zomb-B' is that you have to listen to your own heart and head and question everything. Question stereotypes and the way the world seems or is being presented. Some of the people we should be most concerned about, dangerous right-wing bigots, sound convincing and reasonable.

Darren Shan

#78. Marketing is selling an ad to a firm. So, in some sense, a lot of marketing is about convincing a CEO, 'This is a good ad campaign.' So, there is a little bit of slippage there. That's just a caveat. That's different from actually having an effective ad campaign.

Sendhil Mullainathan

#79. No argument, no matter how convincing, will give courage to a coward

Aesop

#80. A good writer can set a thriller anywhere and make it convincing: the trick is to evoke the setting in such a way that it highlights the crime or unsettles the reader.

Garry Disher

#81. I was loved by a team of smart, shrewd, criminally-inclined vigilantes. But I was loved. If I denied that any longer, I was calling them all liars. And if I denied I was worthy of it, I was convincing myself they were delusional and stupid. I wasn't lying to myself anymore. Not about that.

C.D. Reiss

#82. Freud, Sigmund: A man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would listen - or better still, talk - that their parents were just as bad.

John Ralston Saul

#83. The really good liars, the true grandmasters of bullshit, are so damn convincing because they actually believe their own lies.

Jonathan Tropper

#84. the constant repetition of falsehood is more convincing than the demonstration of truth.

Mark Rothko

#85. Words are easy. It's convincing the heart that's hard.

Maria V. Snyder

#86. It's this time of year when Kit mist rise in the dark, as if we're a farmer or a fisherman, someone whose livelihood depends on beating the dawn, convincing himself that what looks like night is actually morning.

Julia Glass

#87. I was never a very convincing social conservative, and always avoided associating myself with that part of the broader conservative movement.

Niall Ferguson

#88. Part of what makes your performances more convincing is that your own image isn't getting in the way. And the more you can keep it like that, the better for your work and your state of mind.

Sam Riley

#89. It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.

Kenneth Rexroth

#90. We are the beasts that scheme, the predators that predict. We live by the lie, not by the truth; we study the truth only to shape more convincing lies that will bend other people to our will.

Orson Scott Card

#91. He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that
doesn't make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.

Jodi Picoult

#92. Lawrence's claims for the vital self and his inability to make it
convincing independently of Freudian psychology are serious flaws in the novel, explain the sense in which the author's vision exceeds his grasp, and bring the cleavage between intention and performance into clear perspective.

John E. Stoll

#93. There was a very convincing argument made that the extremists have won and the aggression is now supported by the majority, therefore fighting until surrender was the only alternative.

Joichi Ito

#94. Strong and convincing art has never arisen from theories.

Mary Wigman

#95. Piercing my eyes with a look so convincing he could tell me to jump off Agnimar Cliff and my only question would be
Should I go head- or feetfirst?

Holly Bodger

#96. The pitch, timbre, volume, speed, and cadence of your voice, the speed with which you speak, and even the way you modulate pitch and loudness, are all hugely influential factors in how convincing you are and how people judge your state of mind and character.

Leonard Mlodinow

#97. Aside from cutting off her head, though, I didn't really mean to kill her."
Granuaile laughed. "You know I'm on your side, but to an objective listener, that sounds like a less than convincing argument.

Kevin Hearne

#98. If you write about the present it is very much more difficult to make things sound convincing. But writing about the past means that you are writing about a situation in which you know at least as much as anyone else.

John James

#99. I always admired Wonder Woman and the Incredible Hulk - but I don't know if I'd be a very convincing hulk.

Lucy Liu

#100. Life runs in a narrow path to balancing act, convincing tact, and satisfying fact.

Santosh Kalwar