Quotes About Influence

Idiot - A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but pervades and regulates the whole. He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.

love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage of by removal of the patient from the influences under which he/she incurred the disorder. This disease, like Caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than the patient.

POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of an edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.

BALLOT, n. A simple device by which a majority proves to a minority the folly of resistance. Many worthy persons of imperfect thinking apparatus believe that majorities govern through some inherent right; and minorities submit, not because they must, but because they ought.

The devil had not only acquired a monopoly of the good music and the good fun, but has of late acquired a controlling interest in the good writing.

ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds,—exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.

INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary quo given in exchange for a substantial quid.

Un hombre es como un árbol: En un bosque de sus iguales crecerá tan recto como su naturaleza individual y genérica lo permita; solo en campo abierto, cede a las tensiones y torsiones deformantes que lo rodean.

PLEASE, v. To lay the foundation for a superstructure of imposition.

The only way I can protect him now is to make sure he never understands how easy killing can become.

Miss B. says, It's a mama's faith what keeps her children right. I'm not talkin' 'bout the churchgoin' kind, neither. Miss Mabel's got faith in goodness. Tell me you can't help but believe in it too just by lookin' at her.

I learned about women -- how we are made into the women we've become, how we shape ourselves, how we shape each other.

when merchants and traders begin to run wars – hundreds of lives depend on bribes.

It's a rare man who's made better by a bit of power.

What is it about power, that it has to be higher up than everyone else? Can a man not be powerful on the ground floor?

Everyone likes me," said Caul Shivers, the most feared man in the North.

Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, that's my advice.

When men spoke of changing the world, they always meant to suit their own interests.

It was ridiculous the power she had over him. The difference between misery and happiness was the right word from her.

Rejoice in what you have. Power, wealth, fame, they are ghosts! They are like the breeze, impossible to hold. There is no grand destination. Every path ends at the Last Door. Revel in the sparks one person strikes from another.

Secrets, power. It's all a metaphor.

Being in charge can seem like a thing iron-forged, but in the end it's just an idea everyone agrees to.

Strong leaders might like it when someone brings 'em a better idea, but weak ones never do.

If that is your God, I do not believe in Him. What kind of God would He be if your belief could make the slightest difference? Or mine, or anyone's?