Name: How to argue and win every time
ISBN: 9780283062926

How to argue and win every time

How to Argue and Win Every Time is a book that teaches you how to argue in everyday life - at home, in the bedroom, with the boss, with teachers, and with your kids. But it is also a book with sweeping implications for American society, for at its heart, it proposes a new philosophy - that winning is not what you think it is and that your enemy's loss may be your loss as well. Gerry Spence, the noted trial lawyer, says we were born to make the winning argument as we were born to walk. But argument is an art as well as a technique to be learned. The winning argument starts with a mindset, one that gives you permission to argue freely when argument has been the forbidden fruit of your childhood. Spence teaches you how to get beyond the fear and to use this fear as your ally. He shows you that when your argument emerges from your own authority, the argument will not only be the winning argument, it will be unique among all arguments.

What Hacker News says

abustamamMay 2026

It's a classic book but as many others have mentioned in comments, a lot of red pillers use this book as a Bible of sorts, so it's gotten a bit of a bad rap.

In my early adulthood I was deep into MLMs and internet marketing and this book was the Bible, but it was a bit tautological because it was assumed that everyone respected and venerated that book, so all the marketing materials (that we had to purchase of course!) referred to the book.

Indeed, the best way to get rich quick is to sell get rich quick schemes.

On another note, an equally good book that is also used for manipulation is How to argue and win every time by late lawyer Gerry Spence. The book does what it says on the tin but it's more on persuasion methods and framing, which of course can be used for nefarious purposes.

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SomaticPirateFeb 2019

One book that had a large influence on me was "How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday" by Gerry Spence. The portion of the book which spoke to me the most about arguing in relationships.

The author poses the idea of intentionally losing when arguing with a loved one since the victory will usually be a hollow one. It might seem like simple advice, but I found it extremely influential in my life.

There are many times when being right is actually the worst thing to be and made me consider if winning an argument was worth (potentially) damaging a long term relationship. When it was, this book gave some good advice about quickly repairing the damage and minimizing the consequences.

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therobot24Oct 2013

well the first book i tried was "how to argue and win every time" by gerry spence...not a particularly great book, but once i finished it, i moved to classics like lord of the rings, the great gatsby, 20000 leagues under the sea, etc. One suggestion is that even though librivox is free, the quality of audio book has a really high variance - unless you have the time to sort through the ones (cause sometimes there is just that one person you can't stand to listen to), just get them from your library

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