Quotes About Influence

People take on the nature and the habits and the power of thought of those with whom they associate in a spirit of sympathy and harmony.

The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.

Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.

You know you have influence when people start noticing your absence more than the presence of others.

The four most influential moderns: Darwin, Marx, Freud, and (the productive) Einstein were scholars but not academics. It has always been hard to do genuine - and no perishable - work within institutions

Start by being nice to every person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him.

Alexander said that it was preferable to have an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep.

It is no secret that large corporations prefer people with families; those with downside risk are easier to own, particularly when they are choking under a large mortgage.

Humans will believe anything you say provided you do not exhibit the smallest shadow of diffidence; like animals, they can detect the smallest crack in your confidence before you express it. The trick is to be as smooth as possible in personal manners. It is much easier to signal self-confidence if you are exceedingly polite and friendly; you can control people without having to offend their sensitivity.

It is not what you are telling people, it is how you are saying it.

People do not realize that the media is paid to get your attention. For a journalist, silence rarely surpasses any word.

Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least.

The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.

formation of moral values in society doesn't come from the evolution of the consensus. No, it is the most intolerant person who imposes virtue on others precisely because of that intolerance.

we have evidence that collectively society doesn't advance with organized education, rather the reverse: the level of (formal) education in a country is the result of wealth.

we are not made to view things as independent from each other. When viewing two events A and B, it is hard not to assume that A causes B, B causes A, or both cause each other. Our bias is immediately to establish a causal link.

Aesthetics, ethics, and many good things in humans are contagious.

The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.

If the student is smart, the teacher takes the credit.

To become a successful philosopher king, it is much better to start as a king than as a philosopher

we can control a function of x, f(x), even if x remains vastly beyond our understanding.

In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations.

awareness of a problem does not mean much—particularly when you have special interests and self-serving institutions in play.

Also consider that lobbyists—this annoying race of lobbyists—cannot exist in a municipality or small region.