Quotes About Influence

One can be a product only of one's own era, not anyone else's.

though it had been called into being, not by God Almighty, but by the Army Corps of Engineers, who liked to put the finishing touches on Creation.

Cada um de nós, individualmente, pode não ter o sexo na cabeça; mas o povo o tem.

Machiavelli asks "whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?" He answers that "one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.

Sometimes, as in the case of the American Revolution, crucial roles turn out to have been played by people who were not leaders but connectors.

I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter,' he told the Wall Street Journal. 'But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.

The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was one of the few authentic geniuses among nineteenth-century statesmen.

Outlandish ideas stand a better chance of success if they come with royal approval.

Without the spread of British rule around the world, it is hard to believe that the structures of liberal capitalism would have been so successfully established in so many different economies around the world.

Russia's intelligence network did its utmost to damage his rival's reputation

The question was simply this: Would the world be French or British?

No tenemos ningún interés en Sudamérica; no sentimos ninguna simpatía políticamente fundamentada hacia ellos. Venimos de orígenes distintos... Ni todos los tratados que pudiéramos hacer, ni los comisionados que pudiéramos enviar, ni el dinero que pudiéramos prestarles, transformarían a sus Bolívares... en Washingtons'. —Edward Everett

Niall Ferguson

In marked contrast, Ottoman scientific progress was non-existent in this same period. The best explanation for this divergence was the unlimited sovereignty of religion in the Muslim world. Towards the end of the eleventh century, influential Islamic clerics began to argue that the study of Greek philosophy was incompatible with the teachings of the Koran.32

Sir Richard Turnbull, the penultimate Governor of Aden, once told Labour politician Denis Healey that 'when the British Empire finally sank beneath the waves of history, it would leave behind it only two monuments: one was the game of Association Football, the other was the expression Fuck off.'   

six degrees of Monica Lewinsky

The facile, if not tautological, answer to the question is that the West dominated the Rest because of imperialism.

Niall Ferguson

propinquity to power is perceived to matter, especially in a time of crisis.

striving to be a master of the universe

Niall Ferguson

With good reason, Joseph Goebbels described radio as 'the spiritual weapon of the totalitarian state'. Stalin might have added that the telephone was God's gift to eavesdroppers.

we cannot transmit ideas and behaviours much beyond our friends' friends' friends

Power, let us not forget, is not just about being able to buy whatever you want; that is mere wealth. Power is about being able to get whatever you want at below the market price.