Popularity: 1
Vote:   | A caricature has taken hold in the public imagination: Republicans seemingly in the pockets of corporate fat cats who rub their hands together and chuckle manically as they plot to pollute corporate America for fun and profit. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth. |
Popularity: -4
Vote: | A contract says that it is a legal document. It says that you put your name on it, and it says that there is enforcement if you don't do it. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | A single company can differentiate itself, can improve its public image. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Eighty percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. I can change how you think, but how you feel is something deeper and stronger, and it's something that's inside you. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | EPA had been studying the arsenic issue for several years, and recommended using the World Health Organization's 10 part per billion standard. As the 2001 deadline loomed, President Clinton lowered the standard to 10 parts per billion, one-fifth of the previous standard. |
Popularity: -5
Vote: | How I say it has as much of an impact on what people think of me as what I say. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | I am amazed at how eager the CEOs of the biggest companies are today to communicate as effectively as possible, to employ the skills and the language. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | I believe that there are things worth explaining and educating, even if it takes months or years. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | I don't understand why people whose entire lives or their corporate success depends on communication, and yet they are led on occasion by CEOs who cannot talk their way out of a paper bag and don't care to. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | I have seen how effective language attached to policies that are mainstream and delivered by people who are passionate and effective can change the course of history. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | I was fortunate enough to have been invited to do a presentation about how the American people didn't trust politicians in general and, quite frankly, didn't trust Republicans in particular. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | I'd argue that CEOs, with all the corporate scandals that have taken place, are more interested in effective communication than even political people, because corporate people are interested in the bottom line, and so for them good words, good phrases, good presentation matter more than anything. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | I'm not going to let you twist the words, because if I say to you that you can sell a politician the way you sell soap-and it may even look that way from the outside-that says to Americans that they shouldn't respect politicians. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I'm pretty loud and outspoken-but so often subtlety, the quiet voice, actually communicates. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | I've done reasonably well over the last 10 years because I took the strategy of language and politics and applied it to the corporate world, which has never been done before. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Ideology and communication more often than not run into each other rather than complement each other. Principle and communication work together. Ideology and communication often work apart. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak. But that's how we make up our minds. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | If it doesn't describe what it's selling, then it is a very poor descriptor. If you've got a bad product, you shouldn't be selling it. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | If we're getting information from 200 cable channels, if we're talking to 200 people a day, there are so many different messages that are cluttering our heads. It's the same way in corporate America. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | If you're a good numbers person, you're a bad language person. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | In fact, in more cases than not, when we are rational, we're actually unhappy. Emotion is good; passion is good. Being into what we're into, provided that it's a healthy pursuit, it's a good thing. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | It can be done more wisely and effectively, or hey, not at all! We're okay with that too! |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | It is acceptable to bring someone to tears if it explains to them in an emotional way why a product, a service, or a candidate is the right person, is the right thing to do. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are on vacation, we are not rational; we are emotional. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Look, this is about the real-life decisions of real-life Americans, who to vote for, what to buy, what to agree with, what to think, how to act. This is the way it is. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | My job as a pollster is to understand what really matters. |
Popularity: -4
Vote: | My point is that when you're talking issues like the environment, a straight recitation of facts is going to fall on deaf ears. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | One of the things that you have trouble with politicians, particularly in Washington, is when you get mad at them and you can't touch them; you can't punch them; you can't yell at them. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | Part of the task is using language and using speeches and using photo ops and using the power of campaign to convey a specific message. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | People like me have to have the discipline only to work for clients, corporations, political people, products, services, networks that we believe in and we want to see succeed. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | Politics is gut; commercials are gut. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Preserving parks and open spaces is a winner because it doesn't need to be explained to everyday Americans. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Republicans use think tanks to come up with a lot of their messages. The think tanks are the single worst, most undisciplined example of communication I've ever seen. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Rudy Giuliani hired me because I was recommended by his political consultant and because I love baseball. I hate to admit this, but I brought my baseball card collection to show him, because I'd heard he was a fanatic Yankee fan, and I figured this would be a way that we could bond. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | So often corporate America, business America, are the worst communicators, because all they understand are facts, and they cannot tell a story. They know how to explain their quarterly results, but they don't know how to explain what they mean. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Some people call it global warming; some people call it climate change. What is the difference? |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Sound science must be our guide in choosing which problems to tackle and how to approach them. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | That's the job of language; that's the job of English. This is taking very traditional, simple, clear-cut words of the English language and figuring out which words, which phrases to apply at which opportunities, which times. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | That's what the public was looking for back in 1994: a politician who was responsive and responding to them. And all of this language was all tested to make sure it would be effective. The whole document is filled with listening, with responsiveness, with accountability. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | The actual techniques are the same, but how they are applied is different. And that really is the separation; that's the differentiation between politics and the corporate world. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The advantage of working for a corporation is that it has only one message, because a product or a service doesn't speak; it's just there, and you can advertise it. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | The challenge in working in politics, particularly if you're working for a political party, is that everyone's a messenger. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The change in Republican language began with Newt Gingrich in 1994, and while much of his communication still came across as angry and partisan, when Newt was speaking about policy and not talking about those who opposed him, there was none better, and there has been none better. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The Democrats became the party of the cold and the aloof. And in 2004, you look at Howard Dean and John Kerry and to a lesser extent Dick Gephardt; the Democratic Party is now the party of anger. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | The eureka moment is two reasons why the output-based standard should be adopted: common sense and accountability. Input-based standards don't encourage energy diversity; they don't create any incentives; they don't produce solar, hydro, nuclear. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The fundamental problem for Republicans when it comes to the environment is that whatever you say is viewed through the prism of suspicion. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The language of America changed with the election of Bill Clinton, because with all due respect to my friends on the Republican side, Bill Clinton is the best communicator of the last 50 years. He felt your pain. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | The number one hot button to most voters is water quality-including both infrastructure and pollution protection. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The principles behind explaining and educating the product or the elected official is similar, even though the actual execution of it is very, very different. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The problem with the job and the service that I provide is that I have to be involved in it. I can't write a memo from somebody else's focus group. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The Republican National Committee hired me, and they hired me because they wanted someone who could look members straight in the eye and tell them the truth. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | The way you communicate an idea is different than the way you communicate a product. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | There are people still in the Republican Party that I believe practice the communication of anger, of disappointment, of regret, of pain, of sorrow, of suffering. That's not what the American people want to hear. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | There are words that work, that are meant to explain and educate on policies that work, on products that work, on services that work. I'm not going to ever try to sell a lemon. I don't do that. |
Popularity: -4
Vote: | There's a lot of money with a lot of big law firms that have a tremendous amount at stake by getting the right language to convince the right jury that my client is either innocent or that the opposition is guilty. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | There's a problem with political polling in that you have so much pressure to do what your client wants you to do and say what your client wants you to say. I've never felt that pressure. I am independent of the political parties. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | This is a good company, this is a clean company, but it's got all the baggage of every other electric company, of every other power company. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Traditional market researchers are cold and calculating and scientific. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | We as Americans and as humans have very selective hearing and very selective memory. We only hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | We as Americans assume that big companies are bad, and big power companies are even worse. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | We decide based on how people look; we decide based on how people sound; we decide based on how people are dressed. We decide based on their passion. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | We don't want our messages screamed at us. We don't want to be yelled at. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | What causes people to buy a product? What causes someone to pull a lever and get them to vote? I need to know the specifics of that. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | What have I done that's wrong if I provide someone like a Rudy Giuliani or a corporation like a Pfizer language that helps them explain or educate? I've simplified the process for them, which allows them to explain. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | What matters most in politics is personality. It's not issues; it's not image. It's who you are and what you represent. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | When Bill Clinton spoke, his words were so good, and they were spoken with such passion. And that biting of the lower lip and the squinching of the eyes-you just couldn't turn away. Bill Clinton made Frank Luntz because Bill Clinton discovered the power and the influence of words. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | When I started in this business, everybody said the Democrats were the better communicators because they sounded like social workers, and Republicans were awful because they sounded like morticians. In some cases. they actually dressed like morticians. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Words can sometimes be used to confuse, but it's up to the practitioners of the study of language to apply them for good and not for evil. It is just like fire; fire can heat your house or burn it down. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | You cannot lie ever, because a lie destroys the credibility of the product, and credibility is more important than anything. Credibility's even more important than clarity. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | You're watching a great show on TV, you now come to that middle break, you decide in a matter of three seconds whether or not you're going to... flip the channel; get up; or keep watching. It's not intellectual. |