Persuasion Quotes - page 7
While a defeat for Obamacare in the Court would be nice, the defeat of President Obama at the polls on November 6 is crucial. If electoral victory is achieved, Obamacare can and will be repealed - and more judges of a constitutionalist persuasion will be appointed by the next president.
Bill Kristol
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.
Abraham Lincoln
In this regard too I consider myself a cripple, a stunted man whose fate it is to admit honestly that he must put up with this state of affairs (so as not to fall for some romantic swindle)... For you a theologian of liberal persuasion (whether Catholic or Protestant) is necessarily most abhorrent as the typical representative of a halfway position.
Max Weber
Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response.
John F. Kennedy
The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted in their minds between their own creeds and that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by [The Divina Commedia] .
Dante was the first religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony, than in the boldness of his censures of papal usurpation. Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms.
Dante Alighieri
I've always thought, incidentally, that many of us should welcome the fact that...a particular policy idea we hold does have this adverse effect on the opinions of other people. I think this is a very good thing, because it means that those of us who hold our views have to be better to get recognized than people who hold the other views. And in the long run, what matters is the quality of people who propose the ideas and not their number and not their position. It is because it is the quality of these ideas that matters so much that Hayek's ideas have been so wide-spread and have had such an influence, and that you are now seeing the rise in the scientific as well as in the other parts of the world of more people of this particular kind of persuasion....
... I am one of those who has learned a great deal from Hayek. I hope he is as effective as I think he will be in his teaching in Germany, but I also hope that we will see him back here very often indeed.
Friedrich Hayek
It was Constable's persuasion that you should always work in one material: if a water-colour painter, that you should take Nature in water-colour; if an oil-painter, in oil. Not that he rigidly carried out his own views, as he always had a small sketchbook with him in which he noted down anything that struck him; but his sketching, both in water-colour and pencil, was very inferior to his oils.
John Constable
Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people, is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it.
Edmund Burke
In randori we learn to employ the principle of maximum efficiency even when we could easily overpower an opponent. Indeed, it is much more impressive to beat an opponent with proper technique than with brute force. This lesson is equally applicable in daily life: the student realized persuasion backed up by sound logic is ultimately more effective than coercion.
Jigoro Kano
Ironically, for all of their love of conspiracy theories - the rigging of the 2000 election, vote suppression in Ohio in 2004, 9/11 being an inside job, oil companies covering up miracle technology that would allow cars to run on dirt, Britney Spears' career, etc., etc. - when presented with an actual conspiracy of Soviet spies infiltrating the U.S. government, they laughed it off like world-weary skeptics and dedicated themselves to slandering Joe McCarthy.
Then as now, liberals protect themselves from detection with wild calumnies against anybody who opposes them. They have no interest in - or aptitude for - persuasion. Their goal is to anathematize their enemies.
Ann Coulter
These creatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began to observe them; but to me, just after I make them, they seem to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards, as I observe them, that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait, then another, creeps to the surface and stares out at me. But I will conquer yet! Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say: 'This time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational creature of my own!' After all, what is ten years? Men have been a hundred thousand in the making.
H. G. Wells
People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, and the heart, and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways. [...] Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.
Barack Obama
Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason; because, though rational argument may take us to the edge of belief, we require a "leap of faith" to jump the chasm.
Sydney J. Harris
Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know, be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.
John F. Kennedy
