Quotes About Influence

Muß ich ein guter Mensch werden, ohne Vorbilder und ohne Reden, damit ich später besonders stark werde. (S.74)

O ja, ich will nicht umsonst gelebt haben wie die meisten Menschen. Ich will den Menschen, die um mich herum leben und mich doch nicht kennen, Freude und Nutzen bringen. Ich will fortleben, auch nach meinem Tod.

I don't want followers, but friends, admirers who fall not for a flattering smile but for what one does and for one's character.

Help is the sunny side of control.

I've always thought I could use my brain and my heart to jockey everyone around to the good. But life is not jockeyable. When you try, you make people infinitely crazier than they already were, including or especially yourself.

And if minor characters show an inclination to become major characters … you at least give them a shot at it, because … just as in the real world it may take you many years to find out that the stranger you talked to once for half an hour in the railroad station may have done more to point you to where your true homeland lies than your priest or your best friend or even your psychiatrist.

they seemed to read all the papers the school sent home, which I think is actually a little show-offy.

his cell phone—the adolescent's pacemaker.

all of the great writers drank, except for Kafka and Nietzsche, neither of whom you exactly wanted to be when you grew up.

Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else.

Gratitude is seeing how someone changed your heart and quality of life, helped you become the good parts of the person you are.

thinking about A. J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle. One rainy night, a reporter asked him, "Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?" "Oh," Muste replied, "I don't do it to change the country, I do it so the country won't change me.

Like the Buddha and Jesus, who knew they couldn't control our lives, but could infuse lives with their selves, we have been graced with a few people.

You can either leave something for people, or you can leave something in people.

Dread was my governess growing up.

It is the voice we communicate with, the voice which utters the words we seek to impress on men's minds, the voice which evokes emotional response; tears, laughter, sense. Your voice is the most important, most complex, most amazing instrument of all.

overlooking the fact that a woman's most important function in life begins with physical domination?

A man convinced against his will, is of his own opinion still,'

One renegade can discredit a hundred honest injuns.

History is the poisoned well, seeping into the ground-water. It's not the unknown past we're doomed to repeat, but the past we know. Every recorded event is a brick of potential, of precedent, thrown into the future. Eventually the idea will hit someone in the back of the head. This is the duplicity of history: an idea recorded will become an idea resurrected. Out of fertile ground, the compost of history.

Why is it so important to affirm a child? Because a child who is truly accepted by his parents and/or influencing adults can growing up learning to accept himself. Without a constant, debilitating sense of guilt and defeat, he will become at ease with himself. He'll be able to admit his own failures and weaknesses. He'll be able to forget himself and love others. He won't spend his energies worrying about what people think of him, and he won't spend his energies putting down others.

Nothing invites imitation like apparent success. The

Anger at injustice has righted more wrongs than most other things, and it is one of the great creative forces in a civilized society.

Let the flesh instruct the mind.