Answer 1: Follow the advice of the wise — they probably know something!

Read these persuasion quotes from the wisdom through the ages for some useful ideas:

1.  Model the behaviour you’re asking the other person to do. In other words, walk the talk! 

A thousand words will not leave as deep an impression as one deed. (Henrik Ibsen)

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. (Albert Schweitzer)

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. (William James)

A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not. (Unknown)

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. (John C. Maxwell)

Your children will see what you’re all about by how you live rather than what you say. (Wayne Dyer)

2.   Expect to have to show patience and to have to try more than once to get your idea accepted.

 You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. (Margaret Thatcher)

Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience. (Hyman Rickover)

3.  Appeal to the person’s emotions, not just to their intellect:

When dealing with people, remember you’re not dealing with creatures of logic. You’re dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity. (Dale Carnegie)

Those that will not hear must be made to feel. (German Proverb)

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.(Eric Hoffer)

4. Provide a convincing answer to their unspoken question: “What’s in it for me?” 

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

Never appeal to a man’s “better nature”. He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage. (Robert Heinlein)

5. Before trying to convince the other person that this idea is good,  convince yourself first. 

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)

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

Before you try to convince anyone else, be sure you are convinced, and if you cannot convince yourself, drop the subject.   (John H. Patterson)

6. Make your message interesting. 

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)

If you can’t get people to listen to you any other way, tell them it’s confidential. (Unknown)

7. Don’t just tell them what to do, teach them how to do it. 

To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them. (Saint Thomas Aquinas)

8. Carefully help them to discover they want to do this without your having to tell them. 

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found out by others. (Blaise Pascal)

9.  Be friendly – make them like you.

If you wish to win a man over to your ideas, first make him your friend. (Abraham Lincoln)