Quotes About Influence

For in truth habit is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She establishes in us, little by little, stealthily, the foothold of her authority; but having by this mild and humble beginning settled and planted it with the help of time, she soon uncovers to us a furious and tyrannical face against which we no longer have the liberty of even raising our eyes.

Pues la costumbre, verdaderamente es una violenta y traidora institutriz. Poco a poco y con disimulo, establece en nosotros el pie de su autoridad; pero tras este suave y humilde comienzo, una vez asentado y plantado con ayuda del tiempo, pronto nos revela un talante furioso y tiránico contra el que no podemos ya ni alzar la mirada.

Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch as it is the men who have made these without them. There is a natural plotting and scheming between them and us.

Who can doubt that there is an American empire?—an "informal" empire, not colonial in polity, but still richly equipped with imperial paraphernalia: troops, ships, planes, bases, proconsuls, local collaborators, all spread around the luckless planet. —Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History (1984)

If you doubt for a moment that there is a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" in this country, you must be living on another planet.74

Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business.

Don't try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you.

One reason for this is that the media are designed in such a way that thinking seems unnecessary (albeit superficial).

We must act in such a way, when reading a story, that we let it act on us. We must allow it to move us, we must let it do whatever work it wants to do on us. We must somehow make ourselves open to it.

But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and "plays back" the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.

Politics is almost never violent toward the people who are actually making the political decisions.

I don't know, I don't feel right unless I've got the sea and mountains nearby. People are mostly a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel's always linked to the lay of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even.

Women are by nature blithely content to allow others to deceive them. You know full well these tales have only the slightest connection to reality, and yet you let your heart be moved by trivial words and get so caught up in the plots that you copy them out without giving a thought to the tangled mess your hair has become in this humid weather.

4:15. Not 4 not 4:30 but 4:15. She thought to intimidate me with the use of quarter hours.

The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As soon expect Julius Caesar to apply for a job at a crank school as Miss Brodie. She would never resign. If the authorities wanted to get rid of her she would have to be assassinated.

Miss Brodie was easily the equal of both sisters together, she was the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle and they were only the squares on the other two sides.

Her words depressed him. They were like spilt sugar; however much you swept it up some grains would keep grinding under your feet.

But those of Miss Brodie's kind were great talkers and feminists and, like most feminists, talked to men as man?to?man. 

I am putting old heads on your young shoulders,' Miss Brodie had told them at the time.

If anyone comes along," said Miss Brodie, "in the course of the following lesson, remember that it is the hour for English grammar. Meantime I will tell you a little of my life when I was younger than I am now, though six years older than the man himself.

Everything that has happened to you happened because of thoughts impressed on your subconscious mind through belief.

Remember, a suggestion cannot impose itself on the subconscious mind against the will of the conscious mind. Your conscious mind has the power to reject the suggestion.

is never what some other person says or does that affects him. Rather, it is his own reaction to what is said or done that matters.

Remember, your subconscious mind does not engage in proving whether your thoughts are good or bad, true or false. It responds according to the nature of your thoughts or suggestions. For example, if you consciously assume that something is true, even though it may be false, your subconscious mind will accept it as true and proceed to bring about results that must necessarily follow because you consciously assumed it to be true.