Quotes About Influence

My life overlaps with the lives of others so I have no choice but to take from others, which is why writers are full of care, but also— if they're at all truthful — a bit cruel.

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

The words of the Greeks are born on their lips, but those of the Romans in their hearts.

After I am dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

CVIII [...] Se vòi d'Amor o d'altro bene stare, magistra sit tibi vita aliena, Disse Cato in su' versificare

The drill sergeants learned that lavishly praising recruits who got it right worked better than abusing those who got it wrong. The women had been raised to please, Tracy Borum discovered,

Who are we, really? Are our souls shaped, our fates written in full by God, before we draw our first breath? Do we make ourselves, by the choices we our selves make? Or are we clay merely, that is molded and pushed into the shape that our betters propose for us?

Women, it says, "manufacture men and play a great role in guiding and educating the [new] generation. The

And yet some memories cannot be rooted out like weeds, no matter how much one wills to do it.

wealth and connection are no shield against Plague.

The wishes and desires of the powerful can be fickle things. I knew this. But I knew it in that deep place where one hides knowledge that is inconvenient, or too painful to admit, even to oneself.

The stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip.

No one sits, as you do, so close to a king, who does not begin to grasp how the levers of power work, and the cost of the oil that must grease them.

Of course it is. How do you think artists become known? Critics, dealers—they are the people who develop the public taste. Without them, we starve.

I think the seeds of my love were planted there, in the ground that my father's madness harrowed.

But the stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip. They pull life from whatever surfaces they cling to, while the roots, maybe, wither and rot until you cannot find the place from which the seed of the vine has truly sprung. That was my task: to uncover those earliest roots. And he had directed me to the seedbed.

What are works of art for? to educate, to be standards. To produce is of little use unless what we produce is known, is widely known, the wider known the better, for it is by being known that it works, it influences, it does its duty, it does good. We must try, then, to be known, aim at it, take means to it. And this without puffing in the process or pride in the success.

The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree. (from notes on 'Heraclitean Fire')

In Western countries, for instance, it is legal for physicians to receive "bribes" in the form of cash by pharmaceutical companies for every new patient they put on their drugs.

Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be a part of.

He who teaches children learns more than they do.

The argument must begin from a position that generates acceptance or approval.

The separation of church and state, however interpreted, did not signify the separation of church and society.

Think of the Bible and Homer think of Shakespeare and think of me.