Quotes About Influence

Money has always been the primary language of power.

The misogynist must control how his partner thinks, feels, behaves, and with whom and what she involves herself. It is amazing how quickly even successful, competent women will disavow their own talents and power in order to gain their partners' love and approval.

What makes a controlling parent so insidious is that the domination usually comes in the guise of concern.

The misogynist use either direct control or indirect control to gain his objective. He may directly state, plead, or demand that you give up a job, a class, or a friendship, or he may begin to attack indirectly those areas that are threatening to him, making it so miserable for you to continue with them that you give them up just to keep the peace. But, no matter what method your partner uses, the result is the same: You have seriously limited your world to suit his needs.

If you were made to believe that your parents' feelings were your responsibility, you probably still believe that it's within your power to "make" them—and often everyone else—either happy or sad.

A man who is raised by a misogynistic father can absorb his father's contempt for women very early in life. The boy learns that a man must always be in control of women and that the way to get that control is to scare them, hurt them, and demean them. At the same time, he learns that the one sure way to get his father's approval is to behave as his father does.

While every parental behavior sends out a message of some kind, it is only the repetitive themes that form the child's picture of the world. If a girl sees her mother accepting physical abuse as well as psychological abuse, she learns that there are no limits to what a man is allowed to do to a woman. A battered woman demonstrates to her daughter that a woman must tolerate anything in order to hold on to a man.

Even after we grow up, many of us continue to believe that we have little control over our lives. We may see others as the decision-makers in our lives and come to view life as something that happens to us. This belief system, reinforced by childhood identification with mothers who model extreme dependency and helplessness, set many women up for abusive marriages.

Every decision you make becomes intricately interwoven with the rest of your family. Your feelings, behaviors, and decisions are no longer your own. You are not yourself, you are an appendage of your family system.

They say that even now, despite all the reform, it's only a question of knowing the right people and having a bit of money to spend on the election.

Sorry," he said. "I don't like her. No one in my family does. She's a manipulative bitch who will do anything to get her way." She

If people don't do their part to stop the spread of evil when they're asked to, it just gets stronger and then no one can stop it.

Back then, Miss Sarah pulled words up from her throat like she was raising water from a well.

In any relationship, the person who cares the least is the one with the most power.

Hard position when you don't want to be a dictator but you want your own way," Eleanor wrote Hick.

In any situation, the person who can most accurately describe reality without laying blame will emerge as the leader, whether designated or not. Here's

At Sundance, Robert Redford begins meetings by saying, "I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when this meeting is over.

While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a relationship, any single conversation can.

Rules of taste enforce structures of power.

Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one-and can help build a nascent one.

Elites presuppose masses.

An image is drained of its force by the way it is used, where and how often it is seen.

It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge-and, therefore, like power.

Susan Sontag Partisan Review (Winter 1967), p. 57. Also What's Happening in America (1966) The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean Algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history