Quotes About Influence

The First Triumvirate proved that men with the support of the people and soldiers of Rome, lots of money, and a fair amount of nerve could disregard the ruling class and, in effect, hijack the Republic.

Whoever makes his journey to a tyrant's court Becomes his slave, although he went there a free man.

Cicero was nothing if not a genius at character assassination.

We rule the world and our wives rule us.

This found its classic expression in Homer's Iliad, in which Glaucus says to Diomedes that he still hears his father's urgings ringing in his ears: Always be the best, my boy, the bravest, and hold your head high above the others.

But then, he thought, most politicians are small and shabby, the sort of people who have been bullied at school. That's why they become politicians.

He hadn't done anything. He hadn't needed to. Just being there was enough.

When you are rich, people treat you with respect.

It was the garden of a man who wanted to rule the world but couldn't, and so had cut the world down to his own size.

Hawthorne certainly had a magnetic personality. Although, of course, magnets can repel as well as attract.

Judith set up Colin with his chambers and she got him into the States. It's her house they live in and her wealth that keeps their three children in private school. And God help him if he steps out of line. She's the one who wears the trousers in that relationship.

Names have a way of stamping themselves on our consciousness. Peter Pan, Luke Skywalker, Jack Reacher, Fagin, Shylock, Moriarty. . . can we imagine them as anything else?

There's something about Oxford that has always appealed to authors and it seems to me that it has somehow seeped into their work. Think of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Iris Murdoch and, more recently, Philip Pullman. It's hard to imagine them living anywhere else.

But the worst of it was the sense of helplessness — that events had taken over and I was being steered by them rather than the other way round.

Modern life is a great tapestry, and if you wish to take control of it all, you must seize hold of every strand.

That's the thing about books. They stay with you for life.

And before you interrupt me, Colin, you're probably one of them. He had you twisted round his little finger.

Harriet distorted everything. It was a sort of ownership. She made the entire world her own...

I controlled him and made sure that I pressed all the right buttons for a young audience. He didn't smoke. He didn't swear. He didn't have a gun. And he certainly wasn't homophobic.

in America that the average child sees eight thousand murders before they leave elementary school.

and anyway, in America, bribing a politician is part of the etiquette.

You don't have to hold a position to be a leader.

The rules have changed. True power is held by the person who possesses the largest bookshelf, not gun cabinet or wallet.

It's the Culture, Stupid!" January 21, 2013 Anthony Marsella, Ph.D. — TRANSCEND Media Service A "Trickle Down" Analogy of the USA's "Culture of Violence" "It's the . . .