Quotes About Influence

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.

...the devil's aversion to holy water is a light matter compared with a despot's dread of a newspaper that laughs.

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad... Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three... We are dominated by Journalism.

Imagine what will happen to this nation if large numbers of American women start using the Wonderbra. It will be catastrophic. The male half of the population will be nothing but mindless drooling Zombies of Lust. Granted, this is also true now, but it will be even worse.

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

Music!—who loves it not? who has not felt his soul soothed and softened by its sweet influence?

Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names.

Tigers die and leave their skins; people die and leave their names.

Each day of our lives we make deposits into the memory banks of our children.

Parents know best how to push our buttons because they installed them.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson (which is not at all necessary), hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

Recently, photography has become... mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power.

For all of us who are concerned for peace and the triumph of reason and justice must today be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good-will exert upon events in the political field. But however that may be, and whatever fate may have in store for us, yet we may rest assured that without the tireless efforts of those who are concerned with the welfare of humanity as a whole, the lot of mankind would be still worse than in fact it even now is.

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés as the first prize.

Politics: "poli" (many) and "tics" (blood-sucking parasites).

Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.

Collis P. Huntington... maintained a rigid code of ethics of his own framing. It was, however, a code of power, currently described about as follows: "Whatever is not nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry loose is not nailed down."

Besides, it happens (how, I cannot tell) that an idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer's mind and leaves implanted barbs for meditation...

The most original wits borrow from one another.

Epigrams succeed where epics fail.

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats—and one always secretes too much jelly.

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.