psychological persuasion Quotes

I think what we have to do is convince people that matter is tacky.

People are persuaded by reason, but moved by emotion; [the leader] must both persuade them and move them.

Television thrives on unreason, and unreason thrives on television. It strikes at the emotions rather than the intellect.

It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.

But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?

The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal - the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing...There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in a sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or radio program there.

There is always one way to make anybody do anything - the trouble is to find it.

Advertising is the most potent influence in adapting and changing the habits and modes of life affecting what we eat, what we wear, and the work and play of a whole nation.

A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.

The mother tongue is propaganda.

In the field of marketing . . . the trend toward selling [has] reached something of a nadir with the unveiling . . . of so-called subliminal projection. That is the technique designed to flash messages past our conscious guard.

The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable role with the promise of rewards -- material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the garden of Eden.

You can't trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.

When we consider propaganda as the attempt to shape the thoughts and feelings of others, in ways conforming to the aims of the communicator, we find a vast array of different examples throughout history.