Quotes About Influence

Of all existing things some are in our power, and others are not in our power.

Consider constantly what manner of men they are whose approbation you desire, and what may be the character of their souls.

As for others whose lives are not so ordered, he reminds himself constantly of the characters they exhibit daily and nightly at home and abroad, and of the sort of society they frequent; and the approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes, has no value for him.

Your childish clarity faded, and you started listening to the world around you more closely than you did to yourself. The world was persuasive and loud, and so you resigned yourself to conforming to its demands.

empire is not intrinsically about geographical expansion and territorial acquisition. As a nation, that is not our aim. Rather, empire is about the use of superior power—military, political, and economic—to shape the world as the empire sees fit. In this sense, we are the new Rome.

Freedom is participation in power.

To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.

Endless money forms the sinews of war.

In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.

Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!

Calamus fortior gladio.

I worked with Diodotus the Stoic, who made his residence in my house, and after a life of long intimacy died there only a short time ago.

Vita enim mortuorum in memoria est posita vivorum.

It is a great thing to so carry yourself that when people see you coning, they will say to themselves, 'Here comes a winner! Here is a man who dominates everything he touches.

Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.

If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

The world is being run by people my age, men my age, with falling-out hair and health worries, and it frightens me. When the leaders were older than me I could believe in their wisdom, I could believe they had transcended rage and malice and the need to be loved. Now I know better. I look at the faces in newspapers, in magazines, and wonder: what greeds, what furies drive them on?

A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.

we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

When power is scarce, a little of it is tempting.

Karen wasn't hard, she was soft, too soft. A soft touch. Her hair was soft, her smile was soft, her voice was soft. She was so soft there was no resistance. Hard things sank into her, they went right through her, and if she made a real effort, out the other side. Then she didn't have to see them or hear them, or even touch them.

Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.

So Crake never remembered his dreams. It's Snowman that remembers them instead. Worse than remembers: he's immersed in them, he'd wading through them, he's stuck in them. Every moment he's lived in the past few months was dreamed first by Crake. No wonder Crake screamed so much.

Money does talk, but it has a limited vocabulary.