Leadership Quote by Frank Luntz

"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"

Frank Luntz, Politician

About this Quote

Luntz isn’t offering a warm self-help ratio; he’s laying out a campaign playbook with the calm candor of someone describing weather patterns. The 80/20 split flatters the audience as “human” while quietly demoting deliberation to a manageable afterthought. Emotion becomes the main road; intellect is just the exit ramp you can re-sign with better messaging.

The line “I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think” is the tell. It recasts persuasion as empathy, but it’s operational empathy: a method for mapping anxieties, pride, resentment, hope. In Luntz’s world, feelings aren’t messy byproducts of politics; they are the product. That’s why he frames thought as pliable (“I can change how you think”) and feeling as bedrock (“deeper and stronger”). It’s a power claim disguised as respect: your core is yours, but your conclusions are mine to shape.

Context matters. Luntz is famous for focus-group linguistics, for turning policy into palatable phrasing and turning phrasing into political reality. This quote lands in an era when “messaging” isn’t an accessory to governance but a substitute for it, when the argument is less about facts than about which narrative makes people feel seen or threatened.

The subtext is chillingly practical: if you want durable political loyalty, don’t win debates; win identities. Minds can be persuaded; moods can be inhabited. Once you occupy the emotional home, the intellect tends to decorate itself accordingly.

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About the Author

Frank Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is a Politician from USA.

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