Quotes About Influence

She had controlled him. Down to the breath he drew. He'd thanked her for it, and it hadn't been enough for her. Fair enough. He had, after all, defied her in the end.

It didn't matter because it was out of my control, and my energy needed to go to things that I could control, or at least hope to affect the outcome of.

It's why I want us to be very careful what we commit to while we're dealing with this station. They make bad governmental choices, and by patronizing them, we're just validating their choices.

There's something about Richard that's hard to get used to, when you've been dealing with the likes of Valens, and I don't know how to describe it. They both delight in tricking people, in holding all the cards.

If it's your fault, you weren't just a helpless dupe, right? But if somebody else tells you that you weren't a helpless dupe, you get angry.

One of the interesting things about programming people of all sorts to be more ethical is that it also makes them more ethical about the limits of programming people to be more ethical.

A weapon is only a weapon with a will behind it, and a chain is only a chain when someone holds the key.

Authority derives from the consent of the governed, is what I'm saying," Singer continued, as if we hadn't been derailed by the threat of people with guns and a grudge. "And that consent is derived from consensus. Which is never universal.

Don't you wonder who you'd be without the clade? Without Judicial Recon? Without rightminding?

Once again, you rule our destiny.

Preconceptions influence the outcomes.

It would have been amazing, indeed, if my mother could have resisted him. If any woman could.

The opportunity to change my mind was legally mandated by the Synarche, of course. I couldn't cannot entirely to the clade until I turned twenty-five standard, and I had to do it, legally, while I wasn't under the influence of any turning or rightminding controlled by the clade.

Tis in thy hands, Sir Poet.

Even in the heart of the empire, corruption spreads.

The last thing this fumbling child needed was to think somebody he was looking to as a role model found him amusing.

The voice in my head was sounding more and more like Singer with every passing day.

Command was good her her, and she was good for it.

The parasite wings weighed almost nothing, but she felt them stir in the wind or with their own will.

Its voice reached me as vibrations through the deck, through the air. It set my hairs prickling.

His knock apparently startled the scullery maid, but a good suit and a sober-headed cane opened many a door, including this one. And if she seemed inclined to shut it in his face again quite promptly, a silver shilling slipped into her hand with his visiting card corrected the matter.

The way to tame a wild thing is not to pursue it, but to make it pursue you. This is the way Merlins have always been brought to heel.

I might have her body under control-but she, in her own way, had mine. I was going where she wanted to go, where her friends were waiting for us. And okay, it might be a little embarrassing for her to explain how she wound up handcuffed to a stanchion, but she could probably spin that as part of her master plan to subvert me.

Genes load the gun, and environment pulls the trigger.