Talk to convince

Want to learn how to be one of "those" succesful speakers ? Want to hold everyone's attention ?

No... no .. this isn't an advertisement :-D ... just that my brother bought one of those used books I never thought I'd find myself reading ... it's called "The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking" by Dale Carnegie.... been reading it for quite a while ... quite interesting .... still haven't had the chance to apply what I've read though.... anyway .... today I started reading Chapter 9 : Making the Talk to Convince ... voila !! ... what a coincidence !! .... with all the online debates around ...

Here are excerpts I liked :

"My way of opening and winning an argument," confided Lincoln,"is to first find a common ground of agreement." Lincoln found it even when he was discussing the highly inflammable subject of slavery,"For the first half hour," declared The Mirror, a neutral paper reporting one of his talks,"his opponents would agree with every word he uttered. From that point he began to lead them off, little by little, until it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold"

"Is it not evident that the speaker who argues with his audience is merely arousing their stubborness, putting them on the defensive, making it well-nigh impossible for them to change their mind? Is it wise to start by saying, "I am going to prove so and so"? Aren't your hearers liable to accept that as a challenge and remark silently, "Let's see you do it"?

"Is it not much more advantageous to begin by stressing something that you and all of your hearers believe, and then to raise some pertinent question that everyone would like to have answered? Then take your audience with you in an earnest search for the answer. While on that search, present the facts as you see them so clearly that they will be lead to accept your conclusions as their own. They will have much more faith in some truth that they have discovered for themselves. " The best argument is that which seems merely an explanation."