Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it; it will counsel you best.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Engaging emotions can be more powerful than logic in influencing people.
In this quote, Lord Chesterfield emphasizes the importance of connecting with people's emotions—such as pride, love, pity, and ambition—to win their support. When leaders appeal to these aspects of human nature, they can overcome any logical objections that others may have, highlighting that emotional engagement can be a more effective tool than reason alone in leadership and persuasion.
Themes
LeadershipEmotionsPersuasionInfluenceSupport
In practice
Example use cases
During a team meeting to rally support for a new project.
More from Lord Chesterfield
All quotes →Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
Firmness of purpose is one of the best instruments of success.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
Wit is so shining a quality that everybody admires it; most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
Similar quotes
Organizations exist to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
Theodore LevittRead
For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's.
Lyndon B. JohnsonRead
What to an outsider will be no more than the vigorous presentation of a conviction, to an employee may be the manifestation of a determination which it is not safe to thwart.
Learned HandRead
The president can't change the country on his own. But what can he do? He can give an example.
Volodymyr ZelenskyRead
You have to work with people you don't like. You have to work with people who are working against your interests to try to bring them around. If you don't talk to them, you end up in the same place. And you never achieve anything.
Linda Thomas-GreenfieldRead
Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.
Peter DruckerRead