Quotes About Influence

The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them.

The opening screen of T'Rain was a frank rip-off of what you saw when you booted up Google Earth. Richard felt no guilt about this since he had heard that Google Earth in turn was based on an idea from some old science fiction novel

Richard's ex-girlfriends were long gone, but their voices followed him all the time and spoke to him, like Muses or Furies. It was like having seven superegos arranged in a firing squad before a single beleaguered id, making sure he didn't enjoy that last cigarette.

There is a certain kind of small town that grows like a boil on the ass of every Army base in the world.

I guessed that by pretending to be the leader I could make a few things go my way, at least for a little while, until they figured out I was faking it.

Julia Bliss Flaherty, as Ivy now realized, was of the same stripe. Pinned down and obliged to justify herself, she would explain her actions in terms of some altruistic plan. And she might even believe it. But it wasn't that at all. She was like Ivy's grandmother. If you paid fealty to her, she would favor you, and your reputation and power would grow among all the others who did likewise.

Reality is what we make it. Or what is made for us by the companies we keep. It is our clay from which we fashion ourselves.

Let's to the Kit-Cat Clubb.

Judge Fang got to eat this way only when someone really important was trying to taint him, and though he had never knowingly allowed his judicial judgment to be swayed, he did enjoy the chow.

The people who know the most are not allowed to ask questions—or even to make suggestions. The least common denominator sets the standards. Just wait until you see Washington, Betsy—these goddamn car salesmen and small-town lawyers come into town every two years not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground, and this enormously sophisticated and powerful and dangerous system is at their mercy. The Agency distorts information to fit the half-assed policies they scheme up.

For one of the toxic things about Lineages was that rich avout could get not-so-rich ones to do things for them in exchange for better food, better drink, and better lodging.

Is it a virus, a drug, or a religion... What's the difference

Fair or not, Tavistock Prowse would forever be saddled with blame for having allowed his use of high-frequency social media tools to get the better of his higher faculties.

Moral reforms and deteriorations are moved by large forces, and they are mostly caused by reactions from the habits of a preceding period. Backwards and forwards swings the great pendulum, and its alternations are not determined by a few distinguished folk clinging to the end of it. —Sir Charles Petrie, THE VICTORIANS

Trying to, you know, persuade others to join our side. Trying to make the other side look bad. Just like the Internet always was.

It was clear how he had become the leader of a sort of gang back home: not by asserting his leadership but by being so relentless in his production, evaluation, and exploitation of ideas that his friends had been left with no choice but to form up in his wake.

Your diligence is setting an example for all of us—stop it!

Now, there was a time when we believed that what a human mind could accomplish was determined by genetic factors. Piffle, of course, but it looked convincing for many years, because distinctions between tribes were so evident. Now we understand that it's all cultural. That, after all, is what a culture is—a group of people who share in common certain acquired traits.

And you would like me to get mixed up in this somehow?

But one of the responsibilities of leadership is to mask one's own fears, to project confidence at all times.

a culture medium for a medium culture.

Clarity of mind (Cm) is affected by any number of factors, but by far the most important is horniness, which might be designated by ?, for obvious anatomical reasons that Waterhouse finds amusing at this stage of his emotional development.

I know not what you mean. The weather does not make the day. We make the day, as suits us. This day it suits me to destroy the currency of the Realm. The weather is fine.

The world of physical objects seemed to have been made solely for the purpose of giving the men around Grandma something to do with their hands; and not, mind you, for any practical reason, but purely so that Grandma could twiddle those men's emotional knobs by reacting to how well or poorly they did it.