Quotes About Influence

Jack Weatherford

People with big personalities can make very big targets of themselves.

power is the by-product of understanding. So the Greeks said that Orpheus played the lyre with such sympathy that wild beasts were tamed by the hand on the strings. They did not suggest that he got this gift by setting out to be a lion tamer.

But we are in any case mistaken if we think of our picture of the world as a passive record. The picture is made by, it is made of, our activity, all the way from the logic of the brain to the use of the plow and the wheel.

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

The fates of people and of states, of entire civilizations, can depend on whether an extraordinary person can bring forth the proper strength of soul and action. Normal minds and spirits, no matter how numerous, cannot replace such a person.

For this too I learned, that a storyteller's tale may end, but history goes on always. These events, so distant in legend, play a part in shaping the very events we witness about us, each and every day.

Are you a minor character in my tale, or am I a lesser figure in yours?

for the keeping of secrets from adults is oft the only power a child may hope to possess.

People believe what they are told.

The keeping of secrets from adults is oft the only power a child may hope to possess.

Men will heed words spoken from one in a position of authority that they disdain from other sources.

Cos'è il potere? Questi giovani sciocchi vi si arrendono con ogni impaurito battito del cuore. E così le ombre crescono, assumendo potere. Cos'è la paura, se non l'ombra del coraggio?

Never underestimate the power of a poet, even a disgraced one.

Life ended, but politics continued.

there is no saying how events in one place may affect what happens elsewhere, for the tapestry of history is woven of many threads.

Something's happening to this country. We're going to go immoral. And television is doing it.

know that expression—only a man could cause a woman to look like that

We are all impacted by the events that will become history.

Trouble is, your best ain't always the best for those who want a say in the matter.

Fear can be used in all sorts of ways to control people, and that's what he's done." They took a few

It's funny how things work out, isn't it? I mean, it's like dominoes—you touch one and then the others start to go, and sometimes they fall in the right direction and one person knows another and it all opens up like a flower.

I do not know if these hands will become Malcolm's—raised and fisted or Martin's—open and asking or James's—curled around a pen. I do not know if these hands will be Rosa's or Ruby's gently gloved and fiercely folded calmly in a lap, on a desk, around a book, ready to change the world . . .

Propaganda begins when dialogue ends. (Quoted by Marshall McLuhan in McLuhan Hot & Cool)