Quotes About Influence

Well, Hitler's a vagabond, Mussolini's a vagabond, and Stalin's a jailbird. These are new, tough, able, and clever men, straight up from the sewers. Lenin, another jailbird, was the great originator. He

Carol was like a secret spreading through her.

But there is some influence in vows or plans that escapes our power of rejudgement. All false calculations must be paid for, and I found, as you will see, that having said I would sleep in the open, I had to keep to it in spite of all my second thoughts.

economics are but an expression of the mind and do not (as the poor blind slaves of the great cities think) mould the mind.

Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army! See them how they stand in rank ready for assault, the jolly, swaggering fellows!

Those who are made can be unmade.

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.

To be able to bring change into a fixed world, [she] thought. There is power in that.

What if it isn't so much Indianapolis trying to be Brooklyn, as Brooklyn wanting to capture something of Indianapolis?

the real achievement isn't getting out of the place where you were born to build a new identity for yourself. It's better to stay put and change the culture—genuinely transform—where you are.

Few sons are like their fathers--most are worse, few better.

Impressive displays of rhetoric and linguistic force are a good way to seem important and invite a particular kind of admiration, but they tend to silence dissent and discourage deeper modes of engagement.

My son, Achilles is of nobler birth than you and he is also by far the stronger man. But you are older than he is. It is for you to give him sound advice, make suggestions and give him a lead which he will follow to his own advantage.'' Nestor

Few sons, indeed, are like their fathers. Generally they are worse; but just a few are better.

If I had to pinpoint my mother's location, I'd say she's nowhere and everywhere at the same time. She's a foggy memory I can't quite bring into focus and a gentle spirit that infuses all my days. She hovers in the background of my life now, suspended, shapeless, like familiar air.

Memes have an ultimate ambition: taking vast chunks of the world into their possession and restructuring it according to their form.

As paradoxical as it sounds, negative coverage helps Trump because it bonds him to people who also feel disrespected by the denizens of the mainstream press.

Life is a sum of all your choices," wrote Albert Camus. Large or small, our actions forge our futures, hopefully inspiring others along the way.

If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.

He recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny.

I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.

Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives.

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world.

Charles Beard warned us that governments—including the government of the United States—are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their constitutions are intended to serve these interests.