Quotes About Influence

Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power.

Power and fear, he said. The tools of statecraft.

Fragmentation is the natural destiny of all power.

Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: 'Who will exercise the power?' Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for the power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize.

Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura, the Duke said. I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura.

A leader tries to perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader requires the outsider.

To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power.

Time could be made to serve the mind.

Surely you know bureaucracies always become voracious aristocracies after they attain commanding power.

Where is the weapon with which I enforce your bondage? You give it to me every time you open your mouth.

Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant, Prince. What small events! An argument between two women . . . which way the wind blows on a certain day . . . a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier's eye. It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which move the hands of God.

Leaders made mistakes. And those mistakes, amplified by the numbers who followed without questioning, moved inevitably toward great disasters.

Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?   —Bene

I knew Frank Herbert for more than thirty-eight years. He was a magnificent human being, a man of great honor and distinction, and the most interesting person at any gathering, drawing listeners around him like a magnet. To say he was an intellectual giant would be an understatement, since he seemed to contain all of the knowledge of the universe in his marvelous mind. He was my father, and I loved him deeply.

Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.

Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually they lose touch with reality… and fall.

You seldom learn the names of the truly wealthy and powerful. You see only their spokesmen. The political arena makes a few exceptions to this but does not reveal the full power structure.

QUESTION: Who governs the governors? ANSWER: Entropy.

It is not the present which influences the future, thou fool, but the future which forms the present. You have it all backward. Since the future is set, an unfolding of events which will assure that future is fixed and inevitable.

Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They re-create the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

It was another of the essential ingredients that she felt her son needed: people with a goal. Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism. They could be wielded like a sword to win back Paul's place for him.

I succumbed to the lure of the oracle , he thought. And he sensed that succumbing to this lure might be to fix himself upon a single-track life. Could it be, he wondered, that the oracle didn't tell the future? Could it be that the oracle made the future?

When religion and politics ride the same cart, when that cart is driven by a living holy man (baraka), nothing can stand in their path.

What religion and self-interest cannot hide, governments can, Edric said.