Persuasive Quotes - Page 4

• In general, talking about human rights tends to be very persuasive for people who care about human rights.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Rights, Talking, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• A poison can hardly be called safe if for some reason specific to me it's ineffective against, say, my body. But the power of story on the human mind is such that anecdote is often more persuasive than numbers. That's why news stories often concretize the impact of a change in government policy by following the story of one person.

  Zia Haider Rahman

  Mind, Reason, Policy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Vivid, Moral, Explicit

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.48, Vintage

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• "The Lucky One" is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Readers don't read his books because they're true, but because they ought to be true.

  Roger Ebert

  Book, Heart, Romance

  Roger Ebert's review of "The Lucky One", www.rogerebert.com. April 18, 2012.

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• I always thought Woody Harrelson is quite a persuasive guy. He's the kind of guy who can call you up in the middle of the night and tell you, 'Let's all go get a donut!' And you're thinking, 'It's the middle of the night,' but somehow you still get up and go get a donut.

  Jesse Eisenberg

  Night, Thinking, Guy

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• Projecting a persuasive image of a desirable and practical future is extremely important to high morale, to dynamism, to consensus, and in general to help the wheels of society turn smoothly.

  Herman Kahn

  Important, Wheels, Helping

  Herman Kahn, Paul Dragoș Aligică, Kenneth R. Weinstein (2009). “The Essential Herman Kahn: In Defense of Thinking”, p.260, Lexington Books

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• Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples?

  Ted Olson

  Marriage, Sex, Couple

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• Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.

  Eliot Spitzer

  Winning, Best Effort, Justice

  "All Police Interrogations Should Be Tape-Recorded" by Eliot Spitzer, www.slate.com. October 08, 2012.

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• You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. 'Artist's conceptions' and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use.

  Jane Jacobs

  Lying, Real, Artist

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.101, Vintage

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• The Silly Putty-like malleability of the institution [marriage], in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Very few people... would accept marriage on it's thirteenth-century terms. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves. (Though I suppose this would not be a very persuasive argument to those who probably also don't believe in evolution).

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Believe, Silly, People

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• Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Philosophy, Majority

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• The men loved jokes, though they had heard each one before. Jack's manner was persuasive; few of them had seen the old stories so well delivered. Jack himeself laughed a little, but he was able to see the effect his performance had on his audience. The noise of their laughter roared like the sea in his ears. He wanted it louder and louder; he wanted them to drown out the war with their laughter. If the could should loud enough, they might bring the world back to its senses; they might laugh loud enough to raise the dead.

  Sebastian Faulks

  Laughter, War, Men

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• A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.

  Karl Popper

  Crush, Successful, Men

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.557, Routledge

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• How have you been? You’re still as beautiful as ever.” “As are you, my dear. I love your shoes.” “Aren’t they delightful? I saw them and just had to have them. Their previous owner wasn’t too keen to let them go, but I can be very persuasive when I want to be.” “Is that her blood on the left one?” “And no amount of scrubbing will get it out, either.

  Derek Landy

  Beautiful, Blood, Shoes

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• Melanie still grieves for Jared," she stated. I felt my head nod without willing the action. "You grieve for him." I closed my eyes. "The dreams continue?" "Every night," I mumbled. "Tell me about then." Her voice was soft, persuasive. "I don't like to talk about them." "I know. Try. It might help." "How? How will it help to tell you that I see his face every time I close my eyes? That I wake up and cry when he's not there? That the memories are so strong I can't separate hers from mine anymore?

  Stephenie Meyer

  Dream, Strong, Memories

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• Asil left Bran alone with his thoughts then, because if he stayed, Bran would argue with him. This way, Bran would have no one to argue with but himself. And Asil had always credited Bran with the ability to be persuasive.

  Patricia Briggs

  Way, Arguing, Ability

  Patricia Briggs (2012). “Fair Game”, p.21, Penguin

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• Whatever the source of the leader's ideas, he cannot inspire his people unless he expresses vivid goals which in some sense they want. Of course, the more closely he meets their needs, the less "persuasive" he has to be, but in no case does it make sense to speak as if his role is force submission. Rather it is to strengthen and uplift, to make people feel that they are the origins, not the pawns, of the socio-political system.

  David McClelland

  Uplifting, Thinking, Ideas

  "Leadership: what every leader should know about people". Book by Robert A. Portnoy (p. 16), 1986.

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• It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.

  Philip Roth

  Ideas, History, Stories

  Philip Roth (1989). “The facts: a novelist's autobiography”, Vintage

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• Edward Conard’s book represents the most cogent and persuasive analysis of the Financial Crisis to date. It is deeper and likely more accurate than what we have seen so far from journalists, academ- ics, and particularly former government officials.

  Andrei Shleifer

  Book, Government, Analysis

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• The more you know about your customers, the more you can provide to them information that is increasingly useful, relevant, and persuasive.

  Jay Baer

  Information, Relevant, Customers

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• We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Happiness, Laughter, Memories

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1631, Delphi Classics

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• As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice--there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Science, Impact, Political Revolution

  Thomas S. Kuhn (2012). “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.94, University of Chicago Press

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• Most Americans instinctively recoil from the claim that there is an antireligious bias running through the underlying assumptions with which their society approaches church-state issues. However, there is persuasive evidence that among some influential segments of the population, there is a very real antireligious strain.

  Stephen V Monsma

  Christian, Running, Religious

  Stephen V. Monsma (1995). “Positive Neutrality: Letting Religious Freedom Ring”, Baker Publishing Group

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• I should like to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche somewhere in a train or a steamer, and to spend the whole night talking to him. I consider his philosophy won't last long, however. It's more showy than convincing.

  Anton Chekhov

  Wisdom, Philosophy, Night

  "Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends: With Biographical Sketch". Book by Anton Chekhov, 1920.

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• Everything in life is arbitrary yet must be over-determined in literature. Jean McGarry knows how to tell a persuasive tale illuminating these truths.

  Harold Bloom

  Arbitrary, Literature, Determined

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