Just Above Sunset
Volume 5, Number 10
March 11, 2007

Friendly Persuasion

 The world as seen from Just Above Sunset -

"Notes on how things seem from out here in Hollywood..."

Quotes for the week of January 28, 2007 - Friendly Persuasion

"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others." - Blaise Pascal

"I didn't do very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally." - Calvin Trillin

"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 Eisenhower

"When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don't let anyone persuade you to say it."  - H. Jackson Brown

"Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it." - James Lowell

"You can certainly destroy enough of humanity so that only the greatest act of faith can persuade you that what's left will be human." - J. Robert Oppenheimer, to Edward R. Murrow, CBS, January 4, 1955

"He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favorable hearers." - Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity

"Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment." -Samuel Johnson, Prayers and Meditations, 1785

"The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness." -  Terry Pratchett

"There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it it does not need to convince others by force that it is right." - Woodrow Wilson

"I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest." - Muhammad Ali

"It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles." -  Muriel Spark

"People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible." - Will Rogers

"It is well known, that many things appear plausible in speculation, which can never be reduced to practice; and that of the numberless projects that have flattered mankind with theoretical speciousness, few have served any other purpose than to show." - Samuel Johnson

"There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory." - Mark Twain

"ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography." - Ambrose Bierce

"... being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue." - Sinclair Lewis

"Why doesn't the fellow who says, 'I'm no speechmaker,' let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration?" - Kin Hubbard

"Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either" - Gore Vidal

[Friendly Persuasion]

Last updated Saturday, March 10, 2007, 10:30 pm Pacific Time

All text and photos, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 - Alan M. Pavlik

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