Quotes About Influence

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

That Germany was so immensely strong and Austria so dependent upon German strength that the word and will of Germany would at the critical moment be decisive with Austria.

Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.

The only real influence I've ever had is myself.

We're in the hands of the state legislature and God, but at the moment, the state legislature has more to say than God.

in government became the principal supporters of the

There was always a love-hate relationship with New York in the rest of the country, but I made them feel more love than hate.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.

There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.

But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.

Whatever of social importance is done today, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda.

The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, is propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.

The great political problem in our modern democracy is how to induce our leaders to lead.

It is a sort of managerial aristocracy that quietly determines what we buy and how we vote and what we deem as good or bad. "They govern us," the author writes, "by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure.

That propaganda easily seduces even those whom it most horrifies is a paradox that Bernays grasped completely; and it is one that we must try at last to understand, if we want to change the world that Edward Bernays, among others, made for us.

no matter how objectionable the character of a paper may be, it is always a trifle better than the patrons on whom it relies for its support.

Propaganda is aimed mainly at Bernays's potential corporate clientele. And yet the author variously masks that plutocratic bias.

Instead of assaulting sales resistance by direct attack, he is interested in removing sales resistance.

Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought.

The public is not an amorphous mass which can be molded at will, or dictated to. Both business and the public have their own personalities which must somehow be brought into friendly agreement.

The truth is that while it appears to be forming the public opinion on fundamental matters, the press is often conforming to it.

The only difference between "propaganda" and "education," really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don't believe in is propaganda.