Top 100 Quotes About Persuasion
#1. There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and
Aristotle.
#2. I think I have a really diverse audience. I've had people from all sorts of sexual persuasions.
Natalie Merchant
#3. I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just now saying, and about the just and unjust.
Gorgias
#4. Every time a message seems to grab us, and we think, 'I just might try it,' we are at the nexus of choice and persuasion that is advertising.
Andrew Hacker
#5. The person who has been accustomed to subdue men by force will be less inclined to the trouble of convincing or persuading them.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#6. I highly venerate the Masonic Institution, under the fullest persuasion that, when its principles are acknowledged and its laws and precepts obeyed, it comes nearest to the Christian religion, in its moral effects and influence, of any institution with which I am acquainted.
Theodore Roosevelt
#7. A candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman.
Rick Perlstein
#8. Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.
Aristotle.
#9. The stranglehold of the departed was much resented by the new generation of aspiring authors. Which is why it is who did make the breakthrough were so admired.
Andrew Pettegree
#10. One in whom persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition.
William Wordsworth
#11. What's a feminist?" Julie asked.
"Someone who thinks women are fish," Barton replied. He was smiling at Lily. "And that men are bicycles, which makes us basically useless to anyone of the fish persuasion. But it does categorize us as creatures who exist solely for the purpose of being ridden.
Dianne Dixon
#12. He did what good lawyers always do. He shifted his argument in the direction his audience was already going.
Jeffrey Toobin
#13. From him [Death] alone of all the powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof.
Aeschylus
#14. We need to know not only what is done but what is purposed and said by those who shape the destines of states and realms." Horace Greeley
Harold Holzer
#15. Stephen Douglas's oratory was designed for the galleries, Lincoln's for his peers
Harold Holzer
#16. The battle for our culture must be waged at the level of the imagination.
Eric Metaxas
#17. A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others.
Thomas Jefferson
#18. Racist, sexist, and homophobic thoughts cannot, alas, be abolished by fiat but only by the time-honored methods of persuasion, education and exposure to the other guy's-or excuse me, woman's-point of view.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#19. most powerful military in the world is sent to do a task best accomplished by schoolteachers, police forces, persuasion, and time.
Mohsin Hamid
#20. Yet hold it more humane, more heav'nly, first, By winning words to conquer willing hearts, And make persuasion do the work of fear.
John Milton
#21. A laconic Texas lawmaker declined to use his considerable influence to intervene in a loud dispute between his colleagues. When asked why not, he said, They're not voting. If they're not voting, they're not passing any laws. If they're not passing any laws, they're not hurting anybody.
Robert A. Caro
#22. In families well ordered, there is always one firm, sweet temper, which controls without seeming to dictate. The Greeks represented Persuasion as crowned.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#23. Should this my firm persuasion of the soul's immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my last breath.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#24. 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.
Aristotle.
#25. He was the darkest of voices inside her head, the Night-kind King, and when he turned his gift of persuasion onto her, she wanted to take her soul out of her body and hand it to him.
Thea Harrison
#26. Creative persuasion is a matter of being biblical, not of being either modern or postmodern.
Os Guinness
#28. We knew our Father. There was no need for persuasion. Would not His Fatherliness be longing to give us our hearts' desire (if I may put it so)? How could we press Him as though He were not our own most loving Father?
Amy Carmichael
#29. It is easy to convince a man who already thinks as you do ...
Ellen Glasgow
#30. I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor. I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind.
George W. Bush
#31. 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.
Plato
#32. If we cannot prevail with men for God, we will at least endeavor to prevail with God for men.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#33. There is a persuasion in the soul of man that he is here for cause, that he was put down in this place by the Creator to do the work for which he inspires him, that thus he is an overmatch for all antagonists that could combine against him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#34. We must also and always be discerning about the spirit of the age in any generation, which today means squarely facing the seductions of technique.
Os Guinness
#35. I believe that the will of the people is resolved by a strong leadership. Even in a democratic society, events depend on a strong leadership with a strong power of persuasion, and not on the opinion of the masses.
Yitzhak Shamir
#36. Enchantment and seduction were fine means of persuasion, but when time is short, an awkward but quick concussion could better serve a girl's purpose.
Christopher Moore
#37. [M]ere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion.
Plato
#38. The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.
Parmenides
#39. No one can withstand the charm of such a mystery.
Jane Austen
#40. I think the power of persuasion would be the greatest superpower of all time.
Jenny Mollen
#41. Because, Cat, it's the feminine persuasion that's always the deadliest.
Jeaniene Frost
#42. Persuasion, indeed, is a kind of force. It consists in showing a person the consequences of his actions. It is, in a word, force applied through the mind.
James Fitzjames Stephen
#43. The essence of modern capitalism is not slavery of the antique pattern but the possession of the expensive tools of production by a small plutocratic group which controls frequently the tools of persuasion.
Francis Stuart Campbell
#44. It [9/11 event] transcended the political and moved into the metaphysical. There was a kind of cosmic, demonic quality of mind at work here, which refused to have any interest in dialogue and political organization and persuasion.
Edward Said
#45. Senators came to realize that he understood not only their bills but the reasons they had introduced them;
Robert A. Caro
#46. There are no foolproof methods of persuasion, and those that come closest are coercive and dangerous because they override the will rather than convince the mind.
Os Guinness
#47. But she was well used to stubborn patients, the majority of which were always of the male persuasion. She figured it had something to do with carrying a penis around all the time.
Jill Shalvis
#48. One way or another we're taking your bank. All you have to do is decide the level of persuasion we need to apply.
David Louden
#49. Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.
Patrick Suskind
#50. In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture.
Albert Camus
#51. She loved Anne better than she loved her own abilities.
Jane Austen
#52. As a young man in South Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gandhi developed satyagraha, a mode of political activism based upon moral persuasion, while mobilizing South Africa's small Indian minority against racial discrimination.
Pankaj Mishra
#53. 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.
Diana Peterfreund
#54. The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him, although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp.
Plato
#55. He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.
John Ruskin
#56. Force, not persuasion, not discussion, is the legitimate instrument for influencing and policing the hockey mind. Fighting in hockey is one of the most magnificent and eloquent displays of refinement in all of sports.
Brian D'Ambrosio
#57. If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.
Benjamin Franklin
#58. Goldwater hardly ever mentioned a statistic. He hardly ever used it EXAMPLE. He presumed you already knew what he meant. Reagan SHOWED you.
Rick Perlstein
#59. Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity.
Jane Austen
#60. In politics, if you're explaining, you're loosing.
Rick Perlstein
#61. To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
Ayn Rand
#62. To understand desire, one needs language and flesh.
Sherry Turkle
#63. Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.
Virginia Postrel
#64. Ah, there's the governess voice. All stern and disapproving. It makes me feel like a naughty schoolboy.
Lisa Kleypas
#65. A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language you don't hear just with your ears.
Frank Herbert
#66. People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.
Blaise Pascal
#67. It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering.
Jane Austen
#68. Persuasion is not about force; it's about showing a person a door, and making him or her desperate to open it.
David Mitchell
#69. Words without poetry lack passion; words without passion lack persuasion; words without persuasion lack power.
Brennan Manning
#70. Pimping was the ultimate power play. My most powerful tools of persuasion however, were charm and sex."~Jesse
Jeri Estes
#71. It is therefore worthwhile, to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our persuasions.
John Locke
#72. If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk
Jane Austen
#73. We influence others most profoundly when we do not seek to change them at all, but simply go about straightforwardly doing the right and loving thing.
C. Terry Warner
#74. It is thus evident that Rhetoric does not deal with any one definite class of subjects, but, like Dialectic, [is of general application]; also, that it is useful; and further, that its function is not so much to persuade, as to find out in each case the existing means of persuasion.
Aristotle.
#75. Good words were the difference between Emily eating well and not. And what she had found worked best were not facts or arguments but words that tickled people's brains for some reason, that just amused them. Puns, and exaggerations, and things that were true and not at the same time.
Max Barry
#76. Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?" He replied, "All poets believe it does. And in ages of imagination, this firm persuasion removes mountains; but many are not capable of firm persuasion of anything.
William Blake
#77. Even if you persuade me, you won't persuade me.
Aristophanes
#78. And I think there's something about conservatives frankly - and the Left, when it comes to their channels of persuasion, are unpersuasive. They are, most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred.
Karl Rove
#79. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.
Thomas Jefferson
#80. When you give people a choice, they believe they have power.
A.J. Darkholme
#81. [There are m]oral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for ought I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but ... early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.
Bertrand Russell
#82. I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.
John Brown
#83. If "facts" convinced people of things, no one would have sex
Glenn Hefley
#84. Patriotism is a survival from barbarous times which must not only be evoked and educated but which must be eradicated by all means - by preaching, persuasion, contempt and ridicule.
Leo Tolstoy
#85. Many of us persons of the tinted persuasion care about human rights and artistic freedom too.
Salman Rushdie
#86. Oral delivery aims at persuasion and making the listener believe they are converted. Few persons are capable of being convinced the majority allow themselves to be persuaded.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#88. Let us reject the spirit of making proselytes to particular creeds by any other means than persuasion.
Noah Webster
#89. But some of it (evangelistic persuasion) is going to come through service. The deficit that many Christians face is that people look at followers of Christ more for what they're against than what they're for.
Skip Vaccarello
#90. If you had the seeds of pestilence in your body you would not have a more active contagion that you have in your tempers, tastes, and principles. Simply to be in this world, whatever you are, is to exert an influence, compared with which mere language and persuasion are feeble.
Horace Bushnell
#91. The Heaneys were aristocrats, in the sense that they took for granted a code of behavior that was given and unspoken. Argumentation, persuasion, speech itself, for God's sake, just seemed otiose and superfluous to them.
Seamus Heaney
#92. Persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should be adopted to influence the conduct of men. The opposite course would be a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree and can never be reversed.
Abraham Lincoln
#93. No higher duty, or more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution-of whatever race, creed or persuasion.
Hugo Black
#94. A dowried wife, friends, beauty, birth, fair fame, These are the gifts of money, heavenly dame: Be but a moneyed man, persuasion tips Your tongue, and Venus settles on your lips.
Horace
#95. Persuasion is often more effectual than force.
Aesop
#96. The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
Lord Chesterfield
#97. The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.
Nadine Gordimer
#98. Ammunition beats persuasion when you are looking for freedom.
Will Rogers
#99. A person under the firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them.
Livy
