Frank Luntz Quotes (80 Quotes)


    The Republicans know that they have issues and the status quo isn't good enough come November. There is a desire to change now, before voters make the change for them.

    Nuclear power is a new issue. This could become the mainstream energy issue fast.

    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

    Not many people will vote for Gore because of Lieberman, ... but they will reconsider Gore because of Lieberman. Now it's up to Gore.

    What matters most in politics is personality. It's not issues; it's not image. It's who you are and what you represent.


    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.

    It's hard to believe that in just 12 years, Republicans could end up in the same situation that it took Democrats 40 years to get in.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    The way you communicate an idea is different than the way you communicate a product.

    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.

    We as Americans assume that big companies are bad, and big power companies are even worse.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    His greatest difficulty is with the GOP elites. They don't find him loyal. ... But he does well with rank and file.

    When it comes to taxes, nothing matters more to Democrats than the principle of 'fairness,' and when it comes to the Death Tax, Democrats and Republicans alike see it as absolutely unfair.

    I believe that there are things worth explaining and educating, even if it takes months or years.

    My job as a pollster is to understand what really matters.

    Rove has always been a survivor. He's brilliant at understanding the right thing to do at the right moment. He specializes in the ability to handle a crisis. What he has done for the president, I actually expect him now to do for himself, ... He'll know what to do and what to say.

    How I say it has as much of an impact on what people think of me as what I say.

    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.

    Giuliani and Pataki are winners in a Democratic state, and that gives them electoral credibility. If they say this is the candidate, other Republicans will fall into line.

    As angry and pissed off as we were in 1994 about politics, I think it's worse today. This House of Representatives' Republican majority is in jeopardy.

    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.

    She knows New York will be a cakewalk. Let's not play games, she's going to win the Senate race overwhelmingly it'll be a landslide.

    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.


    You owe (DeLay) your majority. He's where he is today because he sacrificed himself to gain those extra seats.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    Southerners don't divide themselves from the rest of the country. They've got the same concerns about taxes, about spending, about Social Security.

    It's an electoral disaster. This is potent because it legitimizes all the Democratic attacks of the past three years that the President isn't paying attention.

    It's almost impossible to go too far when it comes to demonizing lawyers.

    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.

    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.

    Sound science must be our guide in choosing which problems to tackle and how to approach them.

    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.

    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.

    It's an economic and quality of life issue. People are witnessing the impact of illegal immigrants right in their communities.

    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.

    A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.

    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.

    She is the leading candidate for 2008, and you can't give her a clear run. There is no one holding her accountable, and so the national party figured it had to.

    The fundamental problem for Republicans when it comes to the environment is that whatever you say is viewed through the prism of suspicion.

    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.


    More Frank Luntz Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Politics - Corporation - Product - America - Language - People - Communication - Facts - Business & Commerce - Emotions - Parties - Environment - Principle - Education - Passion - Games - Truth - Life - Anger - View All Frank Luntz Quotations

    Related Authors


    Virginia Foxx - Robert A. Taft - Mitt Romney - Michael Huffington - Michael Dukakis - Michael Bloomberg - Marc Antony - Jeffrey Archer - James W. Fulbright - Hillary Clinton


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