Winning Hearts and Minds Quotes

American forces focus just on the enemy, on Al Qaeda, and they forget about the people…. If you want to win the war against al Qaeda, you should protect the people first

Kindness is more persuasive than force.

Every politician, every president gets votes by getting people that don't like him to like him. That's why politicians are slippery: because they talk out of both sides of their mouth.

There've been periods where I had to convince the audience or win them over.

Enchantment is the purest form of sales. Enchantment is all about changing people's hearts, minds and actions because you provide them a vision or a way to do things better. The difference between enchantment and simple sales is that with enchantment you have the other person's best interests at heart, too.

The overriding goal of counterinsurgency is to make friends: You make friends with the people; you isolate the insurgents.

To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it.

I am not well educated or bright enough to be politically clued in, but I hope in the film that I'm going to shock a few people, win a lot of people over.

I think the best way to fight your detractors is to produce positive results and not think about them, but think about winning the hearts and minds of North Carolinians - or Americans - on good policy.

Now I'm standing in front of a thousand people. They're all looking at me, but they're sitting down. They're surrendered, so I have to keep on proving myself to them and giving them all my passion.

The most stupid mistake a counter-insurgency operation can make is alienating the population. If you alienate the population, you're finished.