Quotes About Influence

Steel to the Yanomamo was like gold for the Spanish," Ferguson said. "It could push fairly ordinary people to do things that they wouldn't consider doing otherwise.

Almost seventy years ago the Cuban folklorist Fernando Ortiz Fernández coined the awkward but useful term "transculturation" to describe what happens when one group of people takes something—a song, a food, an ideal—from another. Almost inevitably, Ortiz noted, the new thing is transformed; people make it their own by adapting, stripping, and twisting it to fit their needs and situation.

Road to Survival, "environment" meant not the external natural factors that affected humans but the external natural factors that were affected by humans. Instead of Nature molding people, Vogt envisioned people molding Nature, usually negatively. And by "environment" he meant not a particular place, but a global totality.

who held title to all the land and its produce, could vote down decisions by the male leaders of the League and demand that an issue be reconsidered. Under this regime women were so much better off than their counterparts in Europe that nineteenth-century U.S. feminists like Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, all of whom lived in Haudenosaunee country, drew inspiration from their lot.

Because he controlled food negotiations with Powhatan, the colony's men of consequence swallowed their displeasure.

The drumbeat of negative forecasts had its effect: the United States and the European powers rushed to control every drop of oil in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. In light of the last eighty years of history in these regions, it is hard to view these moves as enduring successes.

Smith returned to Maine and then England. He had a map drawn of what he had seen, persuaded Prince Charles to look at it, and curried favor with him by asking him to award British names to all the Indian settlements. Then he put the maps in the books he wrote to extol his adventures. In this way Patuxet acquired its English name, Plymouth, after the city in England (it was then spelled "Plimoth").

love of science—unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject—industry in observing and collecting facts—and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points.

Hoe al die absurde gedragsregels en al die absurde geloofsovertuigingen ontstaan zijn weten we niet; ...: maar het is opvallend hoe een geloof dat in de vroege levensjaren voortdurend werd ingeprent, als het brein nog ontvankelijk is, welhaast de status van instinct verwerft; en de essentie van een instinct is dat het wordt gevolgd, zelfs tegen de ratio in.

Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.

Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my 'Origin of Species.

One may say there is a force like a hundred thousand wedges...

Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!

Few people can resist doing what is universally expected of them. This invisible pressure is more difficult to stand against than individual tyranny.

I can't help feeling that the good books were purchased because they were talked of as being popular, and the trash was bought because it suited best.

You can therefore think the thoughts of every sage, every artist, every financier, every captain of industry who ever existed, for thoughts never die.

You never know when somebody will pull you to them.

When time is remote enough nobody amounts to much.

Because, like so many of them, he held no beloved idea or philosophy as tightly as his money purse. Take a king or a president or anybody. Put a heavy sack of gold in one hand and a feather-light

You can mire yourself in the past, but you can't change a damn thing in that lost world.

Both parties make a public show of how bitter their conflicts are, and how dangerous it would be for the other party to achieve power, while both prostitute themselves to the financial sector, powerful industries, and the wealthy.

Like politicians, they may pretend to be in charge and shape society – this is a large part of their hope and mental equipment – but it is mostly an accident if they do so.

You are the same today that you are going to be five years from now except for two things: the people with whom you associate and the books you read.

We will be the same person in 5 years that we are today except for 2 things: the people we meet and the book we read