Quotes About Influence

He spent part of last year working in Canada, and I think it rubbed off on him, diminishing his innate American ability to celebrate the civic virtue of idiocy.

When Lafayette visited Monticello in 1824, his old friend Thomas Jefferson toasted him: "When I was stationed in his country for the purpose of cementing its friendship with ours, and of advancing our mutual interests, this friend of both, was my most powerful auxiliary and advocate. He made our cause his own . . . His influence and connections there were great. All doors of all departments were open to him at all times. In truth, I only held the nail, he drove it.

Before the verb "to electrocute" came to define death by electricity, Edison advocated that the verb be named for his nemesis, that a person who had been electrocuted would have been westinghoused instead. I bet Westinghouse came up with some possible definitions of what it meant to be edisoned himself.

we all still bask in the glow and the warmth of Mr. Franklin's rising sun." Sounds good.

one candle will light ten thousand.

The idea of Plato that philosophers must be the rulers and directors of society is practiced in India.

That's the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what's real.

You don't know what you've got within you. A person either creates or he destroys. There is no neutrality …

The sun of that chilishness goes on shining even when the larger bodies of hotter stars have risen to smelt you and cover you with their influence. The recenter stars may be more critical, more in the eye, but that earlier sun still remains a long time.

Who controls everything? Old men of this type. Without needs. They don't need therefore they have. I need, therefore I don't have.

But it's a tiresome preoccupation, self-esteem. Something has to be done to limit the number of people whose opinions can affect us.

Odd that mankind's benefactors should be amusing people. In America at least this is often the case. Anyone who wants to govern the country has to entertain

Keep out of this, please, will you, Mildred? A child isn't a toy." "Oh," she said, "they grow up. Time does it more than fathers and mothers. The parents take too much credit.

But fathers are soft on daughters. Look how Dad favors Angela. He gave her ten times more. Because she reminded him of Mae West. He was always smiling at her boobs. He wasn't aware of it. Mother and I saw it.

John Hawkes is an extraordinary writer. I have always admired his books. They should he more widely read.

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power.

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While

U svakoj zajednici postoji vrsta ljudi koja je neobi?no opasna za druge ?lanove zajednice. Ne mislim na kriminalce. Za njih imamo kaznene sankcije. Mislim na vo?e. Najopasniji ljudi bez iznimke idu za vlaš?u. Dok pozitivnom gra?aninu uskipljuje srce u salonima indignacije. Gospodine uredni?e, za nas je neizbježno da budemo roblje onima koji posjeduju mo? da nas unište.

He turned out to be right. Grielescu had attached himself to the Nazis, not to the milder, Italian form of fascism.

WHETHER people who are greatly respected know what they are saying: Laura (Riding) Jackson warns of the danger that "thinkers" can constitute for the rest of humanity.

Between Sartre and any given problem in politics there has always stood the United States. There are in the world two superpowers, but only one has seemed to him positively evil. When he discussed the Middle East, his first concern as a friend of Israel was to dissociate Israel from American interests.

Action comes from keeping the heat on. No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.

If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get... sewage.

You don't have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.