Quotes About Influence

But no escape is possible. Capital shrinks space, compresses time.

The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rottin', either write things width reading or do things worth writing.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

Marlowe's mighty line.

Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times

Being a leading man on a film set under the direction of somebody like Dickie Attenborough is very empowering, and you have to be extremely careful how you use that power.

Ningún escritor es libre de renunciar a su momento político, pero la literatura refleja la política, no influye en ella, una distinción importante.

The KGB had long excelled in the dark art of manufacturing "fake news.

Spies tend to make extravagant claims for their craft, but the reality of espionage is that it frequently makes little lasting difference.

If Baron von Roenne was the best way of planting an idea in Hitler's head, then Baron Oshima was the most reliable way of finding out if it had taken root there.

It is hard to say which reflected better on Hillgarth: the admiration of Fleming and Churchill or Philby's animosity.

Ernest Hemingway based Robert Jordan, the main character in For Whom the Bell Tolls, partly on Umar Mamsurov.

Lenin is often credited with coining the term "useful idiot," poleznyi durak in Russian, meaning one who can be used to spread propaganda without being aware of it or subscribing to the goals intended by the manipulator.

Lenin is often credited with coining the term "useful idiot," poleznyi durak in Russian, meaning one who can be used to spread propaganda without being aware of it or subscribing

In a brilliant lecture written in 1944, C. S. Lewis described the fatal British obsession with the 'inner ring', the belief that somewhere, just beyond reach, is an exclusive group holding real power and influence, which a certain sort of Englishman constantly aspires to find and join.

Spelling a person's name is the first step toward killing him. It takes him apart and empties him of meaning. This is why God is afraid to have his name spelled.

When a man modifies or adorns a woman's name, or dispatches an endearment into her vicinity, he is attempting at once to alter and deny her, to dilute the privacy of the category she has inherited and to require that she respond as someone quite less than herself.

Like most doctors, the fanciest ones, he seemed offensively healthy, as if he kept the real secret of vitality to himself. He would live forever and people would crumble and die around him. You were supposed to feel like death after seeing him, in terms of your complexion, your posture, your whole body. If necessary, this doctor would eat you to survive.

The other kids formed a roving pack, moving like one of those clusters of birds that seem to share a single, frantic brain.

Knowledge is many things, but it definitely is not power. "Dread" is a better word for it, I think, though I do understand how that ultimately fails as a slogan.

What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.

If the Vatican has a say in it I wouldn't expect miracles.

then monetary policy has at best only short-lived effects on output and employment.