Quotes About Influence

what I want to say is that it doesn't matter what particular style of nonsense infects the child brain. Once infected, the child will grow up and infect the next generation with the same nonsense, whatever it happens to be.

Those who control what young people are taught, and what they experience – what they see, hear, think, and believe – will determine the future course for the nation.

Genes are the primary policy-makers; brains are the executives.

If the phenotypic change in the artefact had an influence on the success of replication of the new gene, natural selection would act, positively or negatively, to change the probability of similar artefacts existing in the future.

Why are genetic determinants thought to be any more ineluctable, or blame-absolving, than 'environmental' ones?

The other idea is that wherever there are 'shared' genetic influences on an extended phenotype, the shared influences may be in conflict with each other rather than cooperative

They are the outward and visible (audible, etc.) manifestations of the memes within the brain.

They may be perceived by the sense organs of other individuals, and they may so imprint themselves on the brains of the receiving individuals that a copy (not necessarily exact) of the original meme is graven in the receiving brain.

The new copy of the meme is then in a position to broadcast its phenotypic effects, with the result that further copies of itself may be made in yet other brains.

Returning, for clarification, to DNA as our archetypal replicator, its consequences on the world are of two important types. Firstly, it makes copies of itself, making use of the cellular apparatus of replicases, etc. Secondly, it has effects on the outside world, which influence the chances of its copies' surviving.

Any effect that a meme has on the behaviour of a body bearing it may influence that meme's chance of surviving.

A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs.

The human brain, and the body that it controls, cannot do more than one or a few things at once. If a meme is to dominate the attention of a human brain, it must do so at the expense of 'rival' memes.

Male nightingales need to influence the behaviour of female nightingales , and of other males. Some ornithologists have thought of song as conveying information: 'I am a male of the species Luscinia megarhynchos, in breeding condition, with a territory, hormonally primed to mate and build a nest.

Authors do not choose a story to write, the story chooses us.

A book series is never truly over. The story lives on, even when the final page has been turned.

As a meteorite strike long ago explains the large lake now, so Amy's absence shaped everything, even when—and sometimes most particularly when—he wasn't thinking of her.

She sometimes wondered, Francie continued, if parents' mistake was to make too much of their importance to their children, and their children repeat the same mistake.

He...discovered that people's goodwill was frequently in inverse relationship to their position...

How can power and ignorance sleep together?

It was a part he felt himself feeling his way into, and the longer it went on, the more the men around him confirmed him in his role. It was as if they were willing him into being, as though there had to be a Big Fella, and, having desperate need of such, their growing respect, their whispered asides, their opinion of him - all this trapped him into behaving as everything he knew he was not. As if rather than him leading them by example they were leading him through adulation.

I am a part of all that I have met.

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.

Don't let what your parents do disappoint you.