When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that “a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men, if you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause. . . . (Lincoln, 1842, para. 6)

This quote from President Abraham Lincoln truly touches on the important strategies you will need to keep in mind as you persuade your audience, though it was Aristotle who first named the three means of persuasion or forms of rhetorical proof that comprise major persuasive speaking strategies. The first, appeal to ethos, concerns the qualifications and personality of the speaker; the second, appeal to logos, concerns the nature of the message in a speech; the third, appeal to pathos, concerns the nature of the audience’s feelings. According to Aristotle—and generations of theorists and practitioners that followed him—you can build an effective persuasive speech by incorporating a combination of these factors. We will examine each of these appeals in turn, in addition to considering examples of problematic reasoning that undermine your effective use of ethos, logos, and pathos.