Quotes about Persuasion

If we say a thing often enough, silently in our hearts or verbally, we will believe it.

From a wise mind comes wise speech; the words of the wise are persuasive. Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the body. PROVERBS 16:23—24 NLT

We convince by our presence.

On the contrary, he would come home and rail at both parties with great wrath—and plainly proved one day to the satisfaction of my wife, and three old ladies who were drinking tea with her, that the two parties were like two rogues, each tugging at the skirt of the nation; and that in the end they would tear the very coat off its back, and expose its nakedness.

The more effective policy for a society is to find ways of persuading its thieves to abandon their role as competitors for property for the sake of becoming audience to the theater of wealth. It is for this reason that societies fall back on the skill of those poietai who can theatricalize the property relations, and indeed, all the inner structures of each society.

When machinery functions perfectly it ceases to be there-but so do we. Radios and films allow us to be where we are not and not be where we are. Moreover, machinery is veiling. It is a way of hiding our inaction from ourselves under what appear to be actions of great effectiveness. We persuade ourselves that, comfortably seated behind the wheels of our autos, shielded from every unpleasant change of weather, and raising or lowering our foot an inch or two, we have actually traveled somewhere.

This means that a peculiar burden falls on property owners. Since the laws protecting their property will be effective only when they are able to persuade others to obey those laws, they must introduce a theatricality into their ownership sufficiently engaging that their opponents will live by its script.

I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them." "Yes," said Harriet, "but I am one of them. I disconcert myself very much. I never know what I do feel." "I don't think that matters, provided one doesn't try to persuade one's self into appropriate feelings.

Discretion plays a major part in making up the salesman's art, for truths that no one can believe are calculated to deceive.

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.

Satan is inconsistent. He persuades a man not to go to a synagogue on a cold morning; yet when the man does go, he follows him into it.

The average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to bolster his opinion