Social Persuasion Quotes

Among all forms of mentation, verbal thinking is the most articulate, the most complex, and the most vulnerable to infectious diseases. It is liable to absorb whispered suggestions, and to incorporate them as hidden persuaders into the code.

Hearts and Minds

Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation.

People, even independently minded people, do to an extent draw their impressions from what they are told, especially if they are told it incessantly by newspapers.

Old-time lobbying doesn’t work like it used to, You have to lobby the public.

The only thing worse than being on the wrong side of an argument is to be on the right side with no one listening.

The person with the most certainty in a given situation will influence the other.

The most powerful force when changing people's hearts and minds is a person-to-person conversation.

The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.

If I may use such a word when I am speaking of religious subjects, it is by voice and words that men 'mesmerize' each other. Hence it is that the world is converted by the voice of the preacher.

Pop culture or advertising doesn't work perfectly. No one is watching and mindlessly accepting every part of the narrative or ideology.

A companion's words of persuasion are effective.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

Much as you would like, you are not going to change people who feel it's part of their religious commitment to 'save' you.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

You can sway an audience if you win the women over. The gentlemen will follow 'cause they can be so foolish like that at times, they are easily led.

Humor disarms people to some degree and makes them a little more receptive to a notion that would normally make them angry,

To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers.

There are two parts to influence: First, influence is powerful; and second, influence is subtle. You wouldn't let someone push you off course, but you might let someone nudge you off course and not even realize it.

I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.

My friends had to convince me to get a Twitter and Instagram.

In one form or another, conscious or unconscious, we have all become propagandists; integrity alone can keep us truthful.