Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.

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

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

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

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.

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.

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 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?

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

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

Facts are not liberals‘ strong suit. Rhetoric is.

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 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.

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

Several excuses are always less convincing than one.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

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

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

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

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.

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

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

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

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

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

In oratory the will must predominate.

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.

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.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

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

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

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

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

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

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.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

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

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.

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

If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

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

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.‘

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.

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.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

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

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information – the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

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

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

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.

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

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.