Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking

by Mehdi Hasan

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion. —Dale Carnegie, author

So what is the first rule for connecting with other people on an emotional level? Tell them a compelling story. Maybe even your own. Keep it simple: focus on your experience and what you felt. And your listeners will feel it, too.

“Open your ears before you open your mouth.”

“One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears, by listening to them.”

“All the best off-the-cuff remarks are prepared days beforehand.”

“the voice in our head that tells us we are not good enough is not our authentic voice but an aggregate of all the voices of those who have criticized us in the past.” We need to “talk back” to those inner critics, she says, and reject them.

“Don’t fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.”

As Mark Twain once quipped: “It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”

be careful of what are known as “vocalized pauses”—those useless filler words between sentences like umm, uhh, like, y’know, and the rest.

“By failing to prepare,” Franklin is said to have remarked, “you are preparing to fail.”

Supposing is good, but finding out is better. —Mark Twain

“Every amazing creative thing you’ve ever seen or idea you’ve ever heard can be broken down into smaller ideas that existed before,” writes author Scott Berkun in his book The Myths of Innovation.

“the importance of relaxation for creative thinking.”

“Research,” according to the Hungarian Nobel Prize–winning biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi, “is to see what everybody else has seen and think what nobody has thought.”

“They may forget what you said—but they will never forget how you made them feel.”