Quotes & Sayings About Persuade

Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity. — Charles Caleb Colton

It's better to get smart than to get mad. I try not to get so insulted that I will not take advantage of an opportunity to persuade people to change their minds. — John H. Johnson

The role of intellectuals and radical activists, then, must be to assess and evaluate, to attempt to persuade, to organize, but not to seize power and rule — Noam Chomsky

In an American state prison or house of correction, I found it difficult at first to persuade myself that I was really in a jail: a place of ignominious punishment and endurance. And to this hour I very much question whether the humane boast that it is not like one, has its root in the true wisdom or philosophy of the matter. — Charles Dickens

108. You minimize my moves in anyway, I must persuade you another way. — Maynard James Keenan

There are different kinds of terrorist movements, and specifically you occasionally face a bully, a Qaddafi. But a bully is different from a zealot. A bully you can deal with, with force, and persuade that bully, through force alone, to stop what he was doing. — Robert McFarlane

Sometimes, self-pity was so ingrained in people that nothing could persuade them to take joy out of living. — Mary Balogh

What unites the women who seek to reduce their weight is the fact that they look for an answer to life's problems in the control of their bodies and appetites. A woman who walks through the doors of a weight watching organization and enters the women's reduction movement has allowed her culture to persuade her that significant relief from personal and cultural dilemma is to be found in the reduction of her body, thus, her decision, although she may not be aware of it, enters the domain of the body politik and becomes symbolically a political act." p.101 — Kim Chernin

Imagine your consciousness is the judge or jury or parent or friend you must persuade. You want your conscious mind to believe in you. Framing is how your mind perceives whatever situation you are in. Framing is how you choose to think about and thus perceive a challenge in your life. Frame — Mike Cernovich

There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side. — Oliver Goldsmith

Hence words are learnt; hence eloquence is to be attained, most necessary to persuade people to your way of thinking, and to unfold your opinions." So, in truth, we should never have understood these words, — Augustine Of Hippo

Time, That Is Pleased to Lengthen out the Day

Time, that is pleased to lengthen out the day
For grieving lovers parted or denied,
And pleased to hurry the sweet hours away
From such as lie enchanted side by side,
Is not my kinsman; nay, my feudal foe
Is he that in my childhood was the thief
Of all my mother's beauty, and in woe
My father bowed, and brought our house to grief.
Thus, though he think to touch with hateful frost
Your treasured curls, and your clear forehead line,
And so persuade me from you, he has lost;
Never shall he inherit what was mine.
When Time and all his tricks have done their worst,
Still will I hold you dear, and him accurst. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

A person who thinks should not try to persuade others to his belief; that is what puts him on the road to a system; on the lamentable road of the "man of conviction"; politicians like to call themselves that; but what is a conviction? It is a thought that has come to a stop, that has congealed, and "the man of conviction" is a man restricted. — Milan Kundera

Oh, keep your warnings and your fears for those giddy women who call themselves women of feeling, whose heated imaginations persuade them that nature has placed their senses in their heads; who, having never thought about it, invariably confuse love with a lover; who, with their stupid delusions, imagine that the man with whom they have found pleasure is pleasure's only source; and, like all the superstitious, accord that faith and respect to the priest which is due to only the divinity. — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

About the Story

Not all the details in this story are true. The times some events occurred have been changed, and the conversations are made up. Most of the things Tad Lincoln did in this story reportedly happened, including saving Jack the turkey and bombarding the Cabinet Room door with his toy cannon. Tad really was determined to raise money to help wounded soldiers and did persuade his father to pardon a woman's husband so he wouldn't be shot. Although Tad's antics often annoyed his father's staff, most agreed he had a big heart and a special way with animals. Once he even hitched goats to a chair and ran them through the White House, upsetting a gathering of dignified ladies. Nothing was too surprising when it came to Tad.
Although several presidents had declared occasional days of thanksgiving, none had ever officially made it a national holiday. Abraham Lincoln finally did so with his Proclamation of Thanksgiving on October 3, 1863. — Gary Hines

There is only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best — Doris Lessing

It is a sweet thing to have someone love you, but it is a far sweeter thing when his actions convince your heart, and his words persuade your soul. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Realizing that the dream had been sent to him for a purpose, Adin worked in secert over many months to create a likeness of the belt he had been shown.Then he traveled around the kingdom to persuade each tribe to allow its talisman to be added to it. — Emily Rodda

It is easier for an artful Man, who is not in Love, to persuade his Mistress he has a Passion for her, and to succeed in his Pursuits, than for one who loves with the greatest Violence. True Love hath ten thousand Griefs, Impatiencies and Resentments, that render a Man unamiable in the Eyes of the Person whose Affection he sollicits. — Joseph Addison

More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world
a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward ...
Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good. — Barack Obama

How did you persuade the countess to confess so quickly?" she asked. "I would have thought she would have held out for days. I would have thought she would rather die than admit anything - "
"I'm afraid that was the choice I gave her."
Her eyes widened. "Oh," she whispered.
-Lillian & Marcus — Lisa Kleypas

We do not suffer by accident. It does not often happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he was violently in love with only a few days before — Jane Austen

We've got to rebuild human hearts - and persuade people that hope isn't just possible, but essential. — Tony Snow

Whenever there is an organized movement to persuade people to believe or do something, whenever an effort is made to "propagate" a creed or set of opinions or convictions or to make people act as we want them to act, the means employed are called propaganda. — Edwin Way Teale

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough. — Abraham Lincoln

Resolving to influence and persuade others will require a degree of personal passion and a depth of caring that you are willing to express and act on. I can tell you this: it will make you feel very vulnerable. The only antidote is to believe you are after a worthwhile change and that you are likely to be the right one to lead this particular charge. — Charlotte Beers

People who trust me will not be swayed by what's been said about me, and for people who don't, no amount of good reports will persuade them. — Zhang Ziyi

I'm going to fall on my face if I have to run next to you looking like that." "I don't look any different than most guys on the beach," he tried to persuade me. "It's you," I stressed. "Any other guy could look exactly like that shirtless,s but it's you shirtless that makes my brain go all stupid. — Rebecca Donovan

When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

For the past 15 years or so, British governments have tried to persuade the rest of us that the best judges of the national interest are ... businessmen. This may be a ridiculous statement, but
ominously
fewer and fewer people laugh at it. — Neal Ascherson

Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others. — Ray Comfort

Man without religion is a diseased creature, who would persuade himself he is well and needs not a physician; but woman without religion is raging and monstrous. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

You have witchcraft in your lips, there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French council; and they should
sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs. — William Shakespeare

I always tell my students: I don't care which side you're on. I respect you too much to try to persuade you in 120 minutes a week, much less lure you into pretending that you agree with me. All I want is for you to own this democracy, to see yours, to have a stake in it. — Susan Estrich

You went to school," Lee said. "I mean, at some point. And it didn't suit you very well. They wanted to teach you things you didn't care about. Dates and math and trivia about dead presidents. They didn't teach persuasion. Your ability to persuade is the single most important determinant of your quality of life, and they didn't cover that at all. Well, we do. And we're looking for students with natural aptitude. — Max Barry

Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interest to go to war. — Thomas Jefferson

I find that the hardest work in the world ... is to persuade Easterners that growing up in the West is not intellectually crippling. — Marilynne Robinson

Whoever is in charge of such things had been sparing with his blessings on the moment Benno was born. He had neither looks nor wit nor skill. He was not large or strong, he could not sing; in fact, he had a stammer, which on most occasions left him self-consciously mute. One gift only had been given, a gift as simple as it is rare: the gift of pure goodness. He knew, unerringly, what was right, what was kind, what would make people happy, and he did it without fail. His goodness took no effort; there was no internal scale to be balanced. He hoped for no reward and feared no hell. He was not clever- in his final year of school before the teachers despaired of him, he was asked how he would equitably divide a half-pound loaf of bread among himself and two friends. He said he would go without and his two friends would each have a quarter pound, and neither threats of failure not the switch could persuade him to change his answer. — Laura L. Sullivan

How could you have bought that girl, chained her up and yet still have managed to persuade her to give you a chance? I mean, how the f*** did you pull that off? — Kylie Scott

If you give a man the correct information for seven years, he may believe the incorrect information on the first day of the eighth year when it is necessary, from your point of view, that he should do so. Your first job is to build credibility and the authenticity of your propaganda, and persuade the enemy to trust you although you are his enemy. — Psy

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? — Isaac Asimov

I would love to persuade Christopher Bailey to get even just a section of Burberry that's, like, organic or free trade. I love him, he's a very good person and an amazing designer, and I have a lot of respect and time for him. — Emma Watson

Remember from this very moment: always choose that which is good for you and good for others. Choose creativity. Become a blessing to existence, because that is the only way that we can persuade God to become a blessing to us. That's the only true prayer: becoming a blessing to everyone - to people, to animals, to trees, to life in all its forms. If one remains consciously alert, slowly slowly the art is learned; slowly slowly it becomes just natural. — Rajneesh

It is essential to persuade the soldier that those he is being urged to massacre are bandits who do not deserve to live; before killing other good, decent fellows like himself, his gun would fall from his hands. — Andre Gide

There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation. — Christopher Hitchens

Don't let the doom criers and the cynics persuade you that the best is past. — Ronald Reagan

Only with people and among people do we stand a chance of and among people do we stand a chance of carrying on without going insane. We cannot in fact bear to be alone for very long, Reger said, we believe we can be alone, we believe we can be left on our own, we persuade ourselves that we can manage on our own, Reger said, but this is a chimera. Without people we have not the slightest hope of survival, Reger said, no matter how many great minds and old masters we have taken on as companions, they do not replace a human being — Thomas Bernhard

To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry. — Paul Rand

Laughter and tears may not persuade, but they cannot be refuted. — Mason Cooley

I'm a piece of work, man. I will do what I want, at all times, always. Nobody's going to persuade me one way or another. I can't be persuaded. I take criticism, I listen, I analyze, but at the end of the day, I make the decisions. Because that's the way I started, and that's the way I'm going to finish. — Action Bronson

Without your wound where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love's service only the wounded soldiers can serve. — Thorton Wilder

Stories are the things that allow us to persuade each other that we're human. — Neil Gaiman

Advertising seemed almost natural to me because it was a business where you had to inform, persuade and educate. And so from being a junior copywriter to being the creative director of one of the largest advertising agencies in the country took me 4.5 years, which is, well, a fairly spectacular rise. — Bryce Courtenay

Since men's nature is prone to hypocrisy, it is easy for Satan to persuade them that the true worship of God consists in ceremonies and outward discipline; men — John Calvin

Suppose a problem in psychology was set: What can be done to persuade the men of our time - Christians, humanitarians or, simply, kindhearted people - into committing the most abominable crimes with no feeling of guilt? There could be only one way: to do precisely what is being done now, namely, to make them governors, inspectors, officers, policemen, and so forth; which means, first, that they must be convinced of the existence of a kind of organization called 'government service,' allowing men to be treated like inanimate objects and banning thereby all human brotherly relations with them; and secondly, that the people entering this 'government service' must be so unified that the responsibility for their dealings with men would never fall on any one of them individually. — Leo Tolstoy

It Was a lovely spring morning, and the sun was shining gloriously. I knew that the rain of the last night must be glittering on the grass and the young leaves; and I heard the birds singing as if they knew far more than mere human beings, and believed a great deal more than they knew. Nobody will persuade me that the birds don't mean it; that they sing from any thing else than gladness of heart. — George MacDonald

True translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal. One reads and rereads the words of the original text in order to penetrate through them to reach, to touch, the vision or experience that prompted them. One then gathers up what one has found there and takes this quivering almost wordless "thing" and places it behind the language it needs to be translated into. And now the principal task is to persuade the host language to take in and welcome the "thing" that is waiting to be articulated. — John Berger

Horace once told me that laws were powerless against the private passions of the human heart, and only he who has no power over it, such as the poet or the philosopher, may persuade the human spirit to virtue. — John Williams

It sounded so promising. As if this would be the day. The day to ride a bike without training wheels. To make it through the afternoon without a stained blouse and a scolding. To persuade the girl next door to like me. To meet a man. To make a mint. To prosper. To love. To live fearlessly. — Anna Quindlen

Now bring what we have into common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different tribe, now since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to persuade those who hate us unjustly, to the end that they may become partakers of the same joyful hope of a reward from God the ruler of all. — Justin Martyr

The most effective way to close down the human mind and to manipulate its sense of self is to program into it some form of dogma. A dogma will always vehemently defend itself from other information and repel any alternative opinion which contradicts its narrow, solidified view. Dogmas become a person's sense of security and means of retaining power, and humanity tends to cling to both until its knuckles turn white. Dogmas take endless forms, and when you can persuade different people to hold opposing dogmas, the manipulation of conflict and control through "divide and rule" becomes easy. — David Icke

The form of the poem, in other words, is crucial to poetry's power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry's credit: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being. — Seamus Heaney

Let no one persuade you of a single thing. Study your hunger and how to feed it. Trust in whatever sounds twist your viscera. Write in the cadences of first love, of second chances, of air raids, of outrage, of the hideous and the hilarious, of headlong acceptance or curt refusal. Make the bitter music of bumdom, the sad shanties of landlessness, cool at the equator and fluid at the pole. Set the sounds that angels make after an all-night orgy. Whatever lengthens the day, whatever gets you through the night. Make the music that you need, for need will be over, soon enough. Let your progressions predict time's end and recollect the dead as if they're all still her. Because they are. — Richard Powers

I can't persuade myself that one of the problems facing the planet today might be a shortage of books by me. — Lawrence Block

Fools are more hard to conquer than persuade. — John Dryden

And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. — Mother Teresa

It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever - that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. — Mary Shelley

The shrimp's protein and ours are not exactly the same, but they're so
similar that if you turned up in court and tried to convince a judge that your
version was not a badly concealed plagiarism, you'd be very unlikely to win.
In fact, you'd be a laughing stock, for rhodopsin is not restricted to vent shrimp
and humans but is omnipresent throughout the animal kingdom.... Trying to persuade a judge that your rhodopsin is not plagiarised
would be like trying to clajm that your television set is fundamentally different
from everyone else's, just because it's bigger or has a flat screen. — Nick Lane

The only weapon of power, its only strategy against this defection, is to reinject the real and the referential everywhere, to persuade us of the reality of the social, of the gravity of the economy and the finalities of production. — Jean Baudrillard

The cure of the part should not be attempted without treatment of the whole. No attempt should be made to cure the body without the soul. Let no one persuade you to cure the head until he has first given you his soul to be cured, for this is the great error of our day, that physicians first separate the soul from the body. — Plato

Truly powerful people have great humility. They do not try to impress, they do not try to be influential. They simply are. People are magnetically drawn to them. They are most often very silent and focused, aware of their core selves ... They never persuade, nor do they use manipulation or aggressiveness to get their way. They listen. If there is anything they can offer to assist you, they offer it; if not, they are silent. — Sanaya Roman

It may sound as though she wants a simple PowerPoint presentation about the business, but if she's hoping to persuade a client of something, you'll want your slides to help do that. Be clear, too, about deadlines and who needs to be looped in on the project. — Kate White

Back in those days I was stoned almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The difference today is that there is nothing you or anyone else could say to persuade me to inhale enough even to fill a flea's lung with cannabis. It's actually impossible to measure how fantastic I feel. — Chris Sullivan

We have confused God with Santa Claus. And we believe that prayer means making a list of everything you don't have but want and trying to persuade God you deserve it. Now I'm sorry, that's not God, that's Santa Claus. — Harold S. Kushner

All "direct" persons and men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Those in whom the faculty of reason is predominant, and who most skillfully dispose their thoughts with a view to render them clear and intelligible, are always the best able to persuade others of the truth of what they lay down, though they should speak only in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly ignorant of the rules of rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though unacquainted with the art of poetry. — Rene Descartes

You don't tell people who disagree with you they'd be better off somewhere else. And you don't reduce them to stereotypes; you address them as fully formed people worthy of respect. You try to persuade them. — Peggy Noonan

For he who lives as passion directs will not hear argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways? — Aristotle.

It is in the highest interests of the devil to persuade the world that religious people are disagreeable. — Hubert Van Zeller

One way to demonstrate courtship as a matter of course in an established relationship is to remember that courtship is the act of trying to persuade someone to choose you - by demonstrating that you've chosen them. If you look at each day of your relationship as another opportunity to choose to be with the person you're with, you'll display those feelings of affection in your actions and your words - and you'll refrain from taking that person's presence for granted. — Sarah Wendell

The dumb masses were always the easiest to persuade. The bread-and-circus concept had worked in ancient Rome, and it still worked today. — James Garmisch

In truth, there never was any remarkable lawgiver amongst any people who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would not have been accepted by the people; for there are many good laws, the importance of which is known to be the sagacious lawgiver, but the reasons for which are not sufficiently evident to enable him to persuade others to submit to them; and therefore do wise men, for the purpose of removing this difficulty, resort to divine authority. — Niccolo Machiavelli

I think my reputation will look after itself," Holmes said. "If they hang me, Watson, I shall leave it to you to persuade your readers that the whole thing was a misunderstanding. — Anthony Horowitz

You persuade people with passion, so you've got to have a product or service you feel emotionally charged about. Then you can tell stories about it that will inspire others. — Anita Roddick

Let no one trust so entirely to natural prudence as to persuade himself that it will suffice to guide him without help from experience. — Francesco Guicciardini

I was attached to this city by the god - though it seems a ridiculous thing to say - as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you
all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company. — Socrates

If something's public then it seems like the important thing is the person in that public. And the notion of rhetoric. I went to Jesuit schools that focused on first there's grammar, then there's rhetoric, and rhetoric's usually seen as a kind of degraded method, because you're trying to persuade. — Vito Acconci

If a Christian really believed that his neighbor will be tortured in all eternity in Hell, he should try day and night to persuade him to repent and believe. How sad that this doesn't happen. — Richard Wurmbrand

We pray for our enemies; we seek to persuade those who hate us without cause to live conformably to the goodly precepts of Christ, that they may become partakers with us of the joyful hope of blessings from God, the Lord of all. — Justin Martyr

Our political parties exist for no other reason than to win power; they are not ideological debating societies designed to present a particular political philosophy and to persuade voters to accept it. — Tom Wicker

I don't believe that math and nature respond to democracy. Just because very clever people have rejected the role of the infinite, their collective opinions, however weighty, won't persuade mother nature to alter her ways. Nature is never wrong. — Janna Levin

If you want to "get in touch with your feelings," fine, talk to yourself. We all do. But if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order, give them a purpose, use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down, and then cut out the confusing parts. — William Safire

Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. — Joseph Goebbels

The best way to persuade people is with your ears - by listening to them. — Dean Rusk

Because they will want me in Edinburgh to make sure that the Scottish king holds to the new alliance with England. They'll want me to hold him in friendship with Henry. They'll think that if I am queen in Scotland then James will never invade my son-in-law's kingdom." "And?" I whisper. "They're wrong," she says vengefully. "They're so very wrong. The day that I am Queen of Scotland with an army to command and a husband to advise, I won't serve Henry Tudor. I won't persuade my husband to keep a peace treaty with Henry. If I were strong enough and could command the allies I would need, I would march against Henry Tudor myself, come south with an army of terror. — Philippa Gregory

Bjartur declared that he had never denied that there was much that was strange in nature. "I consider that there's nothing wrong in believing in elves even though their names aren't on the parish register," he said. "It hurts no one, yes and even does you good rather than harm; but to believe in ghosts and ghouls
that I contend is nothing but the remains of popery and hardly fit for a Christian to give even a moment's consideration." He did his utmost to persuade the women to accept his views on these matters. — Halldor Laxness

Sometimes the more educated an abuser, the more knots he knows how to tie in a woman's brain, the better he is at getting her to blame herself, and the slicker is his ability to persuade other people that she is crazy. The more socially powerful an abuser, the more powerful his abuse can be - and the more difficult it can be to escape. — Lundy Bancroft

(Florence) Nightingale's passion for statistics enabled her to persuade the government of the importance of a whole series of health reforms. for example, many people had argued that training nurses was a waste of time, because patients cared for by trained nurses actually had a higher mortality rate than those treated by untrained staff. Nightingale, however, pointed out that this was only because more serious cases were being sent to those wards with trained nurses. If the intention is to compare the results from two groups, then it is essential to assign patients randomly to the two groups. Sure enough, when Nightingale set up trials in which patients were randomly assigned to trained and untrained nurses, it became clear that the cohort of patients treated by trained nurses fared much better than their counterparts in wards with untrained nurses. — Simon Singh

To have a dream is a do or die so you have to persuade it with patience; you must have a room for challenges and a room for criticisms. — Euginia Herlihy

Can I persuade you that if you let a driver into your lane, or thank a sales clerk, or smile at someone in a hallway, you can change his or her life? Of course not - but if you don't go through the day with the assumption that small moments and small gestures can touch people's lives, what is the alternative belief? — Robert Maurer