Quotes About Influence

Don't underestimate the extent to which your actions influence those who work for you. Manners of speech, decision-making style, ways of behaving, and other attributes will rub off.

Such is the nature of how people respond to authority figures. Inevitably, people will begin to emulate you. Even if you have a non-hierarchical environment, you'll still be perceived as an authority figure, and people will respond to you as such. Therefore, you've got to be a role model of the culture you want to create.

Darwin Smith stands as a classic example of what we came to call a Level 5 leader—an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will.

As the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu pointed out 2,500 years ago, "True leaders inspire people to do great things and, when the work is done, their people proudly say, 'We did this ourselves.

Leading as a charismatic visionary—a "genius with a thousand helpers" upon whom everything depends—is time telling. Shaping a culture that can thrive far beyond any single leader is clock building.

people worried more about the leader—what he would say, what he would think, what he would do— than they worried about external reality and what it could

The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more

Why the histories of states should have so persistently insinuated themselves in the place that might have been occupied by peoples merits reflection.

If one were to imagine a pantheon or Hall of Fame of highmodernist figures, it would almost certainly include such names as Henri Comte de Saint-Simon, Le Corbusier, Walther Rathenau, Robert McNamara, Robert Moses, Jean Monnet, the Shah of Iran, David Lilienthal, Vladimir I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Julius N~erer

The talk had turned to business, and in the few short hours she had learned more about Hong Kong techniques than through all the reading she had done. More and more it was clear that unless you were on the inside, real power and real riches would escape you.

all the people have a right to vote, and no single man ever controls the destiny of any nation, either by divine right or by right of stupid votes of a stupid electorate.

kith or kin lust for power as others do.

he's not very pro-American and it drives him mad that the British Empire's no more, that the U.S. is arbiter of the world's fate and making obvious mistakes

Fallibility in a leader is very trying. Isn't it? They spill so much of other people's blood.

When the Dragons belch, all Hong Kong defecates.

There can only be one Tai-Pan.

Our writers have always pointed the way for us, Mr. Grey, they've formed our thinking and feeling, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Bunin …" He added with pride, "Writers with us are pathfinders.

Men need to share secrets. That's why we're superior to them and they'll always be in our power.

The pressures of command were clearly weighing on him. He had insufficient authority, but he was no longer sure he wanted more of it.

When a man is in command, he sits in a position where he cannot have friend or foe. Regular human relationships do not figure into it. So you can't worry about what people think of you, and you can't lie awake and have sleepless nights. The job of being in command is lonely by definition.

They were heedless of the fact that they'd gain more converts if they just stopped talking.

Howard got sex-crazy in the winter and probably wanted to send him out on a poontang prowl: Schwab's Drugstore, the extra huts at Fox and Universal, Brownie snapshots of well-lunged girls naked from the waist up. His Majesty's yes or no, then standard gash contracts to the yes's--one-liners in RKO turkeys in exchange for room and board at Hughes Enterprises' fuck pads and frequent nighttime visits from The Man himself.

Those we understand are those we control.

Hoffa said, "Fucking Jesus turned fish into bread, and that's about the only thing I haven't tried. I've spent six hundred grand on the primaries and bought every fucking cop and alderman and councilman and mayor and fucking grand juror and senator and judge and DA and fucking prosecutorial investigator who'd let me. I'm like Jesus trying to part the Red Fucking Sea and not getting no further than some motel on the beach.