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"Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided."
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"It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences-makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely.' Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions."

"Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided."

"True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary and nothing but what is necessary."

"You know, to address crowds and make promises does not require very much brains."

"I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech."

"Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding."
Explore more quotes by Aristotle

"Friends are an aid to the young to guard them from error to the elderly to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action to those in the prime of life to assist them to noble deeds."

"And it will often happen that a man with wealth in the form of coined money will not have enough to eat, and what a ridiculous kind of wealth is that which even in abundance will not save you from dying with hunger!"

"Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and less about what he said than about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so much as his intentions; nor this or that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or usually been."

"Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state."

"All terrible things are more terrible if they give us no chance of retrieving a blunder-either no chance at all, or only one that depends on our enemies and not ourselves. Those things are also worse which we cannot, or cannot easily, help. Speaking generally, anything causes us to feel fear that when it happens to, or threatens, others causes us to feel pity."

"Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing."
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