Quotes About Influence

What happens to you, Uhtred, is what you make happen.

He liked to see men cowed and frightened, for that made them biddable, and Sergeant Hakeswill was always at his happiest when he was in control of unhappy men.

The art of war is to make the enemy do our bidding.

Man make a kingdom strong, not gold.

We each have to choose something but it is another question how and why we presume to choose for others.

The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian.

Owing to the lingering Jesuit influence, the study of Confucianism continued to prevail in Western Sinology, while Chinese Buddhism and Chan came to be considered mere offshoots of Indian mysticism.

For now you have only Mahomet and his dupes, and the Maid and her dupes; but what will it be when every girl thinks herself a Joan and every man a Mahomet?

Dis-lui que les livres ont la puissance que leur accorde leur lecteur et que celle-ci peut être sans fin.

L'important n'est pas de convaincre, mais de donner à réfléchir.

Trump and Zuckerberg, though they probably agree on nothing, are the two blades of a pair of scissors that is cutting the fabric of truth to ribbons.

To leave a whisper of myself in the world, my ghost, a magna opera of words.

Geschichte treiben heißt Brücken zwischen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart schlagen und beide Ufer beobachten und an beiden tätig werden.

Ich meine nicht, daß Denken und Entscheiden keinen Einfluß auf das Handeln hätten. Aber das Handeln vollzieht nicht einfach, was davor gedacht und entschieden wurde. Es hat seine eigene Quelle und ist auf ebenso eigenständige Weise mein Handeln, wie mein Denken ist und mein Entscheiden mein Entscheiden.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was: A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful.

Very few people are able to discount the effect of circumstances upon their own characters.

You may kill an artist or a thinker, but you cannot acquire his art or his thought.

Knowledge exists, and good will exists; but both remain impotent until they possess the proper organs for making themselves heard.