Arthur Helps Quotes

The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.

The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

Seducing one's neighbor to a good opinion and then afterwards believing devoutly in this neighbor's opinion--who can match women in this clever ploy?

My father didn't want to ski alone, so he took me up to the mountains in order to basically bribe my mom to come with him.

You can't always win arguments as a writer, but you have to just go ahead and say, well, I'm doing it that way anyway.

Enchantment and seduction were fine means of persuasion, but when time is short, an awkward but quick concussion could better serve a girl's purpose.

There's no such thing as good ideas and bad ideas. There are only your own ideas and other people's. If you want someone to like your idea, tell him he said it first last week and you just remembered it.

This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.

A Yea might turn in to a Nae and vice versa if a sufficient quantity of wordage was applied. In other talk you argument out until you get the answer you want.

Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired.

In a general way, a major goal of the propagandist is to seek some kind of authoritative backing for the belief he or she is propagating.

You can only coax someone into the vortex from in the vortex.

When you insist someone submit to your will, it is accomplished most easily if you give them a small victory so they can retain their dignity while they do as you insist. ~ Kahlan Mother Confessor

Manipulated, one manipulates others.

If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence. It's simply someone's idea going through my new mind.

In diplomacy, clear-cut wins and losses are rare.

The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen, but to convince... the masses. But the masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them.

There is nothing to prevent you from pushing your propaganda, to push your programme out to the students or with the public at large…and if you can carry the ground, if you are right, you win. That’s democracy.

The poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know And keenly felt the friendly glow And softer flame; But thoughtless follies laid him low, And stain'd his name!

Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.

People who can spread ideas regardless of what those ideas are, win.

Now, you'll hear people call here on my show claiming they used to be lib and they've changed their minds. That happens, but it happens naturally. It's not because I've focused on trying to persuade people. I think while it's a noble objective to try to help people to see things the right way, this is a different psychological collection of human beings, and they are walled off from anything that's not them.

Rules were made for fools to follow and wise men to be guided by.

The Americans are the most gullible, because they don't like to deny co-workers' requests.

There are follies as catching as contagious disorders.