Quotes About Influence

Probably because for all the amazing things books can do, they can't make you into a bad person.

if the church fails to make the shift to apostolic movements again, Christian influence in Western culture will continue to fade, and church attendance will remain in its current trajectory of decline. All we can say in writing this book is, not on our shift! Not if we can help it.

They were following me because I was ahead of them, which is no way to choose a leader. Following someone simply because they're out in front is never a good idea, but it happens all the time.

all of us at various times in our lives believe true things for poor reasons, and false things for good reasons, and that whatever we think we know, whether we're right or wrong, arises from our interactions with other human beings. Thinking independently, solitarily, "for ourselves," is not an option.

Professor Henry Higgins: There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!

The Christians' focus was not on "saving" people or recruiting them; it was on living faithfully—in the belief that when people's lives are rehabituated in the way of Jesus, others will want to join them.

You are a manipulator when you try to persuade people to do something that is not in their best interests but is in yours. You are a motivator when you find goals that will be good for both sides, then weld together a high-achieving, high-morale partnership to achieve them.

We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.

We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.

THE SEISMOGRAPH HAS TAUGHT us that a tremor in any part of the world can be felt by a sufficiently sensitive instrument everywhere in the world. The same is true of a person's deeds. One should not think that his actions do not affect others. Everything one does in some way affects everyone else in the world. —RABBI YERUCHAM LEVOVITZ (1873–1936)

Leaders must be arrogant enough to believe they are worth following, but humble enough to know that others may have a better sense of the direction they should take.

But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.

Let a man be right with God, reconciled through the blood of the cross, humbled at the foot of Calvary; let him be broken, coming to God guilty and hopeless and needy; and at that moment God takes hold of him and transforms and uses all his gifts and qualities, until that man becomes a mighty influence. But he has first to come down from his ladder of pride to the very foot of the cross.

The Christian who, by God's grace, learns to confess the Lord Jesus in circumstances which might normally be calculated to silence him, is a Christian whose life is a tremendous challenge to other people.

Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.

Hemingway said, 'As you get older, it is harder to have heroes.'

As you get older, it is harder to have heroes.'

I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.

items that have become part of me, foliage that has grown to conceal the bare stem of my real personality, what I was like before I ever saw these books, or any book at all, come to that.

But it was great, we sit in the same dressing room where, like, Johnny Cash sat and Willie Nelson and all those guys. That was in itself something amazing - I was on the same space these guys stood on, ya know?

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.

None of us—not you, not me—is here to stick a toe in the water. We're here to make waves.

Despite Schelling's aspirations and claims, he was instrumental not in the completion of metaphysics, but rather in its abandonment.

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.