Quotes About Influence

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.

Connection" was the cement of the governing class.

Planted firmly across the path of change, operating warily, shrewdly yet with passionate conviction in defence of the existing order, was a peer who was Chancellor of Oxford University for life, had twice held the India Office, twice the Foreign Office and was now Prime Minister for the third time. He was Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, ninth Earl and third Marquess of his line.

against the unmeasured aggrandizement of any power whatsoever

Fathers do as they wish with their children. They break their hearts if it suits them, as easily as they would wring a chicken's neck to make a meal!" -- Lewis Mallory

Fair Spring! whose simplest promise more delights Than all their largest wealth, and thro' the heart Each joy and new-born hope With softest influence breathes.

Do you ask, then, what will educate your son? Your example will educate him.

Are children then to be neglected? Surely not: but having given them the instruction and accomplishments which their situation in life requires, let us reject superfluous solicitude, and trust that their characters will form themselves from the spontaneous influence of good examples, and circumstances which impel them to useful action.

I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.

Of authority there are two sorts, the authority of right, and the authority of force.

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence. But if you try that line in Europe, especially in France, they say, Oh, no! You're so English! I think I'm probably anchored somewhere in the Channel.

Capitalism works better from every perspective when the economic decision makers are forced to share power with those who will be affected by those decisions.

Ballplayers do not argue with the umpire so that he'll change the decision in question. They want to be on his mind when he makes the next one.

Incentives matter. Pay and working conditions matter. This is another reason why economic freedom matters.

Everyone in society should be a role model, not only for their own self-respect, but for respect from others.

World War II had a very important impact on the development of technology, as a whole.

Americans did very little ski jumping until the television program "Wide World of Sports" began showing a promotional film snippet in which a ski jumper hurtles off the edge of the chute, completely out of control, with various important organs flying out of his body.... Fitness buffs saw this and realized that any activity with such great potential for being fatal must be very good for you, so the sport began to catch on.

Everybody is a teenage idol.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away

I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.

And my parents made me want i am. So what? We get stuff from our parents, but we also get stuff from the world around us. From people around us. And at the end of the day, we're us.

He thought for a moment. About puppets. About being controlled. Everyone was controlled by something, the Impressionist knew. By a spouse. A parent. A boss. A friend. By one's own impulses, be they dark or light. Everyone was a puppet to something. Most people just couldn't see the strings, is all. And so they didn't believe they were puppets in the first place.

I'm not sure which is worse--being born to it or learning it.

Once he gets inside your head, you're dead.