Quotes About Influence

Young dreams may be wild ones, but they are never corrected by ridiculing them. They must be steered by a loving voice that has earned the right to be heard, not one enforced by means of power.

Marcello Pera, the atheist philosopher and former Italian politician, has argued powerfully that Western love of liberty, equality, and brotherhood simply wouldn't exist without the Christian message.4

Once you have gained a following of such magnitude; once you can do no wrong by virtue of the adulation you receive; once you are one of the richest people in the world and can buy the companies that sponsor you; once you have a magical impact on the minds of people… is it not a short step to playing god in the minds of your followers?

But there is more to it than that. My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known—not the famous, not saints, but

Truth and authenticity are easy casualties before the power of the lens.

When one studies the viewing habits of the young and considers the thousands of hours spent unthinkingly in front of a TV screen or iPhone, it is easy to see why the power of abstract reasoning has died since the advent of television and, in the words of Jacques Ellul, we are living with the humiliation of the word.

la incredulidad es contagiosa; es fácil contraerla si no piensa bien en lo que cree y por qué.

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?

It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

Libraries raised me.

A book is a loaded gun.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.

The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.

The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.

Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven't friends. Go find some.

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of a well-read man?

Shakespeare wrote Moby-Dick, using Melville as a Ouija board.

We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.

You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides of a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.

I take this continent with me into the grave.

Perhaps I'm not their dead one back, but I'm something almost better to them; an ideal shaped by their minds.

He was part of us and when he died all the actions stopped dead, and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. i've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million actions the night he passed on. 

Evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back. Starve. Starve. Starve.