Quotes About Influence

He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.

Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them." "I feel that others live up to me, if they want me...

He was taking control, rather than simply letting things happen to him. Then

He was taking control, rather than simply letting things happen to him.

That's all a belief was. A thought. But look at how much power it held!

In short, we suffer from an "illusion of control" that fools us into thinking the future is more predictable and less uncertain than it really is. Or worse, we believe we can influence chance events through our own actions.3

History is written not only by posterity, but for posterity as well.

Yet what difference does it make whether the women rule or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same." —ARISTOTLE

But the standouts in the generations immediately preceding Cleopatra's were—for vision, ambition, intellect—universally female.

The Hellenistic Age begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ends in 30 BC, with the death of Cleopatra. It has been perhaps best defined as a Greek era in which the Greeks played no role.)

the border between the human and divine was fluid for Cleopatra.

It is not difficult to understand why Caesar became history, Cleopatra a legend.

Aesop's fable: As the Lion said to the Man, "There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.

John Jay would offer the best analysis later, to George Washington: "There is as much intrigue in this state house as in the Vatican, but as little secrecy as in a boarding school.

Gazing east, Adams elaborated. "Power is intoxicating," he wrote, "and those who are possessed of it too often grow vain and insolent.

Cleopatra stood at one of the most dangerous intersections in history: that of women and power. Clever women, Euripides had warned hundreds of years earlier, were dangerous.

Nefertiti is a face without a queen; Cleopatra is a queen without a face.

The truth is smudged forever by Roman manhandling. (218)

He was unflinching, but touched too on his secret weapon, one especially valuable in 1771: "The opinion of others," he assured his former father-in-law, "I very little regard.

Thomas Hutchinson observed: "Power, once acquired, is seldom voluntarily parted with.

Adams elaborated. "Power is intoxicating," he wrote, "and those who are possessed of it too often grow vain and insolent.

Without the character of Samuel Adams," declared John, "the true history of the American Revolution can never be written.

With great power, there must also come, great responsibility

A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn't create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he's born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside. To experience complete freedom in seeking his purposes he would have to be alone, and that's impossible, since a person who isn't brought up among people cannot become a person.