Several excuses are always less convincing than one.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

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

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

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

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.

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

When I get logical, and I don’t trust my instincts – that’s when I get in trouble.

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.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

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

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

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.

Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.

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.

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.

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

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

You can only have one aim per debate.

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.

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.‘

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

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

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.

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

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

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.

To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view.

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

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

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

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 oratory the will must predominate.

We must reinforce argument with results.

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

What I like about the jokes, to me it’s a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won’t be funny.

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.

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.

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

If you have passion, there is no need for excuses because your enthusiasm will trump any negative reasoning you might come up with. Enthusiasm makes excuses a nonissue.

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

Dr. Karel Culik is an outstanding applied mathematician, a specialist in algebra, logic, computer sciences and mathematical linguistics. In 1965, he visited the linguistics research program at MIT, and we have worked together on several projects since.

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.

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

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

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.

Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen. The quantum mechanical and the relativity ideas are examples of this.

Don’t give in to excuses that can keep you from really living the best life God has for you.

One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.

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

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

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

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

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

Law is mind without reason.