Influence Strategies Quotes

Arouse in the other person an eager want.

The idea of applying psychology or behavioural sciences to communication is not a new one. It's very old behavioural economics. If it gives you some additional insights - so be it.

Machiavelli had some cold tricks for people who wanted to be demagogues and wanted to take over the world.

This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.

I have discovered that a famed familiarity in great ones is a note of certain usurpation on the less; for great and popular men feign themselves to be servants to others to make those slaves to them.

Don't try to convert the elderly person; circumvent him.

The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.

I think soft power definitely can work. But, you know, it depends on who you're dealing with. Some people are so intent upon power and keeping power that it's very difficult to conduct soft power.

You can only coax someone into the vortex from in the vortex.

The extraordinary power of influence is now within everyone's reach. Recent graduates, executive assistants, project managers, and business leaders can all benefit from Monarth's simple steps for 'getting everyone to follow your lead.'

I think history has shown that the worst way to [try to] bring people over and actually change public opinion is by insult and applied degradation of them.

The first step in persuasion is to entice your target to imagine doing the thing you want them to do.

The competent leader of men cares little for the niceties of other peoples' characters: he cares much--everything--for the exterior uses to which they may be put.... These are men to be moved. How should he move them? He supplies the power; others simply the materials on which that power operates.

You have no power at all if you do not exercise constant power.

It is really - one of the things in it that I heard yesterday in his testimony that I thought was disturbing was this - what did he call it? - a massive persuasion campaign. That sounded a little bit like Goebbels or Gore-bels.

I influence people, hopefully on the positive side.

A small group of motivated citizens can potentially have as much influence as a lobby group spending millions of dollars.

The only difference between the failure of a great idea and the success of a medocre idea was the way in which the idea was communicated.

To wheedle and coax is safer than to command.

The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

When you insist someone submit to your will, it is accomplished most easily if you give them a small victory so they can retain their dignity while they do as you insist. ~ Kahlan Mother Confessor

There should be a name for this, for the process whereby one knows one is being yanked and concedes it has been done successfully - that one is grateful to have been spun. In the theater, it is called the willing suspension of disbelief. That's what allows the play to make an impact on the audience: they have to be able to make believe that what's happening on the stage is really happening. Maybe to a degree it is a requirement for all political participation, all effective political communication, too.

That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.

We are all salesmen every day of our lives. We are selling our ideas, our plans, our enthusiasms to those with whom we come in contact.

The ones who are the smartest are the ones who use us. In other words, they understand the relationship between the press and leaders.