Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

Religion is not going to come up with any new arguments.

What we all want is public safety. We don’t want rhetoric that’s framed through ideology.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

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.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‚You don’t know how to use the English language,‘ or ‚How could you make that argument?‘ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

You can only have one aim per debate.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don’t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I’m sure he didn’t call everybody jerks.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats – and one always secretes too much jelly.

People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

Reviews condition people. At the end of the day, a lot of human minds are malleable. They can be easily shaped with strong words.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

I think if you make a good movie, people walk away arguing.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

Charm is a way of getting the answer ‚Yes‘ without asking a clear question.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

Facts are not liberals‘ strong suit. Rhetoric is.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe, that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.

I don’t believe it. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Several excuses are always less convincing than one.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

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.

We must reinforce argument with results.

In oratory the will must predominate.