Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
~ Amos Bronson Alcott

To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.
~ St. Thomas Aquinas

Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life -- there, if one must speak out, the real man.
~ Marcus Aurelius

The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what your saying, and they can't know what you've saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting until you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.
~ William Bernbach

Let one who wants to move and convince others, first be convinced and moved themselves. If a person speaks with genuine earnestness the thoughts, the emotion and the actual condition of their own heart, others will listen because we all are knit together by the tie of sympathy.
~ Thomas Carlyle

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.
~ Thomas Carlyle

He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves.
~ Lord Chesterfield

If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.
~ Lord Chesterfield

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.
~ Marcus T. Cicero

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.
~ Joseph Conrad

Roughly speaking, any man with energy and enthusiasm ought to be able to bring at least a dozen others round to his opinion in the course of a year no matter how absurd that opinion might be. We see every day in politics, in business, in social life, large masses of people brought to embrace the most revolutionary ideas, sometimes within a few days. It is all a question of getting hold of them in the right way and working on their weak points.
~ Aleister Crowley

It is nobler to convert souls, than to conquer kingdoms.
~ Louis Debonnaire

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

''For your own good'' is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction.
~ Janet Frame

If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Oral delivery aims at persuasion and making the listener believe they are converted. Few persons are capable of being convinced; the majority allow themselves to be persuaded.
~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them.
~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing to it.
~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe