Convincing Quotes - Page 17

• Angus Deaton has written a wonderful book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. . . . Deaton's book is a magisterial overview of health, income, and wealth from the industrial revolution to the present, taking in countries poor and rich. Not just jargon-free but equation-free, the book is written with a beautifully lucid style. . . . [P]owerfully argued and convincing.

  Michael Marmot

  Country, Book, Style

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• Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Logic, Failing, Impulse

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Early Spring in Massachusetts: From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau”, p.51, Library of Alexandria

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• Gravity is more suggestive than convincing.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Gravity

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• Logic is the art of convincing us some truth.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Art, Logic

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• There is convincing evidence that the search for solitude is not a luxury but a biological need. Just as humans posses a herding instinct that keeps us close to others most of the time, we also have a conflicting drive to seek out solitude. If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped.

  Bill Vaughan

  Distance, Convincing Evidence, Luxury

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• The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation.....There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease.

  Robert S. Mendelsohn

  Lying, Convincing Evidence, Vaccines

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• I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it.

  Michael Behe

  Ideas, Doubt, Common

  "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Book by Michael Behe, 1996.

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• God reminds us again and again that things between He and us are forever fixed. They are the rendezvous points where God declares to us concretely that the debt has been paid, the ledger put away, and that everything we need, in Christ we already possess. This re-convincing produces humility, because we realize that our needs are fulfilled. We don’t have to worry about ourselves anymore. This in turn frees us to stop looking out for what we think we need and liberates us to love our neighbor by looking out for what they need.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Humility, Thinking, Worry

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• It's much easier to be convincing if you care about your topic. Figure out what's important to you about your message and speak from the heart.

  Nicholas Boothman

  Heart, Important, Care

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• No man can prove upon awakening that he is the man who he thinks went to bed the night before, or that anything that he recollects is anything other than a convincing dream.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Dream, Men, Thinking

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• The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. ...but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man.

  John Reader

  Men, Convincing Evidence, Missing

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• The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Children, Lying, Believe

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969). “On Certainty”

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• People think they know all these things about other people, and if you ask them why they think they know that, it'd be hard for them to be convincing.

  Elliott Smith

  Thinking, People, Knows

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• It's not about supplication, it's about power. It's not about asking, it's about demanding. It's not about convincing those who are currently in power, it's about changing the very face of power itself.

  Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

  Inspiring, Asking, Faces

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• I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Want, Way

  John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.164, Penguin

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• The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises it is flat. Flat characters ... in their purest form ... are constructed round a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor to them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round. The really flat character can be experessed in one sentence such as, "I will never desert Mr Micawber." There is Mrs Micawber - she says she won't desert Mr Micawber; she doesn't, and there she is.

  E. M. Forster

  Character, Curves, Ideas

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• The notion that somehow or another they'll (Iran) put it in a picnic basket and hand it to some terrorist group is merely an argument that may be convincing to some people who don't know anything about nuclear weapons. I don't find that argument very credible, I'm not sure that people who make it even believe in it. But it's a good argument to make if you have no other argument to make. The fact of the matter is, Iran has been around for 3000 years, and that is not a symptom of a suicidal instinct.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Lying, Believe, Suicidal

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• Discipline is the long and arduous process of convincing the mind to abide by one's conscience.

  Wes Fesler

  Discipline, Long, Mind

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• A trembling in the bones may carry a more convincing testimony than the dry documented deductions of the brain.

  Llewellyn Powers

  Health, Brain, Dry

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• There were also the razor marks on her wrists and forearms, half a dozen per arm, not very deep, not very convincing really, just a lame, hapless attempt at hurting herself. There hadn't even been that much blood and nobody at the hospital had been at all surprised. These scars, for some reason, he didn't mind. Maybe they even appealed to him. They showed that she was weak and in need of him.

  Geoff Nicholson

  Hurt, Blood, Mind

  Geoff Nicholson (1998). “Bleeding London”, p.62, The Overlook Press

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• Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong. To win a bloodless battle, the victory is long. A simple act of faith, reason over might. To blow up his children would only prove him right.

  Sting

  Children, Blow, Winning

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• Gentle words, quiet words, are after all the most powerful words. They are more convincing, more compelling, more prevailing.

  Washington Gladden

  Powerful, Quiet, Prevailing

  Washington Gladden (1883). “Things New and Old in Discourses of Christian Truth and Life”

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• If one cannot invent a really convincing lie, it is often better to stick to the truth.

  Angela Thirkell

  Women, Lying, Sticks

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• The Bully has a Jekyll and Hyde nature - is vile, vicious and vindictive in private, but innocent and charming in front of witnesses; no-one can (or wants to) believe this individual has a vindictive nature - only the current target of the serial bully's aggression sees both sides; whilst the Jekyll side is described as "charming" and convincing enough to deceive personnel, management and a tribunal, the Hyde side is frequently described as "evil"; Hyde is the real person, Jekyll is an act.

  Tim Field

  Bullying, Real, Believe

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• Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine.

  Victor C. Ferkiss

  Struggle, Mean, Loss

  Victor C. Ferkiss (1969). “Technological Man: The Myth and the Reality”

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