Persuasive Techniques Quotes

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity.

[Critiquing the Gettysburg Address:] We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp.

Illogical thinkers throw names and slurs around because they have no arguments with which to rebut their opponents. Rational people have to keep hammering their points home.

The planned use of information targeted at specific audiences using any media available to achieve desired outcomes that primarily benefit the source

The best messages in any given negotiation are really implied indirectly, come to the other person based on thinking that you're getting them to do - getting them to get some really solid thought behind their answers. And so a great thing to send someone in an email is, 'Have you given up on this project?'

Political lobbying is like propositioning women. You get slapped a lot of times, but then you get some ‘yeses’ as well.”

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.

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

[British Prime Minister William] Gladstone is a sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination, that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents, and glorify himself.

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.

Ninety percent of selling is conviction, and 10 per cent is persuasion.

People hate negative tactics, but the fact is, as the 3 A.M. ad demonstrates, they can be very effective.

A Realtor is an old fashioned Real Estate man with a neck tie. A Real Estate man sold you what you wanted, a Realtor sells you what you don't need. A Real Estate man showed you what you could raise on the land, a Realtor tells you what you can build on it.

I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion.

I think skilled salesmen have the ability to work out who you are and pick out aspects of your personality. They almost manipulate you, in a way, to make you buy their product.

Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You'd run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising?

When I'm on TV, I'm often talking to a conservative host. I may have another conservative arguing with me. You've got very limited time, and you're using 'sound-bite' type language.

The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing.

The way a story makes an argument is quite different from the way a persuasive essay does it. Emotional truth and the logic of metaphors dominate.

There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Advertising is so touchy-feely. You have to speak to the psyche of the people. I'm not very good at that.

Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.

Improve writing skills: 1. Keep paragraphs short. 2. Use bold and CAPS to make points. 3. Start with a question or short statement. 4. Give me meat in the middle. All meat. 5. Make me smile, think, or act at the end.