Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes

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.

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.

In oratory the will must predominate.

It would be awesome to be so impressive that we could sway people to our way of thinking just by declaiming our thoughts, but probably most of us lack such gravitas. Luckily, there's something even better: evidence, logic, and argument.

A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.

Power is being able to say complete and utter nonsense and have it be believed, powerlessness is where no matter how much cogent evidence and proof one has, to not be believed.

Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic; since both are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to impeach.

President Lincoln was trying to convince some people, he used some arguments, convincing other people, he used other arguments. That was a great - I thought a great display of presidential leadership.

Whoever in debate quotes authority uses not intellect, but memory.

We do not respect people's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. If my reasons are good enough for believing what I believe, you will helplessly believe what I believe. I will give you my reasons and reasons are contagious. That is what it is to be a rational human being.

I like to make sure that I'm believable. If I don't believe me, then there's a lot of people that don't believe me, but if I can believe that I'm doing it, then I know the audience will, too.

It's so much easier to debate people when you can pretend that they hold moronic position that they don't actually believe.

Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. Bush asks people to believe.

Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.

If you were making poetry out of convictions - trying to convince other people - you were in the territory of rhetoric, and that wasn't the territory of poetry. I think that's pretty smart. I think that it doesn't need to be altogether true, but that was my starting place.

Bertrand Russell used to employ the method of "evidence against interest"; in other words of deciding that a critique of capital punishment, say, carried more weight if it came from a prison governor. (My friend John O'Sullivan puts it like this: If the pope says he believes in God, he's only doing his job; if he says he doesn't believe in God, he may be on to something.)

Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.

Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.

Now all orators effect their demonstrative proofs by allegation either of enthymems or examples, and, besides these, in no other way whatever.

A touch of truth makes a lie worth believing.

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.

Successful argument is a communication between the acknowledged authority of both parties to the argument.