Quotes About Influence

In childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future, and like the fortune-teller who sees a long journey in the cards or death by water they influence the future. I suppose that is why books excited us so much. What do we ever get nowadays from reading to equal the excitement and the revelation in those first fourteen years?

There are good men everywhere. Here. Odessa. Even Moscow. Do they count? Does anyone ever listen to them? Yes, of course they do. At the beginning, their voices matter. Without them nothing happens. But afterwards it's different. Afterwards, the only thing that matters is power.

What I mean is this: you meet someone, you think about them. You're already changing because of the way you think about them. You meet them again, you think about them some more, you're changing again. And on it goes. You are changing right now. Before my eyes.

Why can't our job here on earth be simply to inspire each other?

That's emails for ya: sometimes they're like an arrow that hits so deep in the target, you can't pull it out.

One smile is more effective than a thousand shouts

I never would have believed it, the way Hunter's rousing people up. He's talking like some kind of hostile fascist, and yet they're loving it.

Writing well is one of the most crucial tools of the modern person. It is a skill required by nearly every profession, and one that allows you to get your work done, help others, and leave behind a legacy of your thoughts and actions so you may be remembered long after you are gone.

Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world.

You have the choice of deliberately directing your thinking, or allowing other forces to dictate your desires and attitudes.

A wise man makes his own decisions. An ignorant man follows public opinion.

Keeping the important 18-minute wall in mind, we now have to consider the fast start 8-second rule. The 8-second rule recognizes a law of human nature that suggests that most people decide within eight seconds whether a particular speaker is worth listening to in the first place. In other words, don't piddle away your moment of greatest impact on opening amenities. Opening amenities are opening inanities. So begin with a bang. Avoid anemic cliché starts

Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

Dogs could mellow a wild boy, or open up a shy one.

You are what you leave behind.

All it takes to get elected in twenty-first-century America is a mob of frightened sheep and a wolf with a nice smile

Feel the power of the Dark Side," he murmured. "Always," Parker said.

The shadows betray you, because they belong to me…

In a human, or a Copy being run in the usual way, the physics of brain or computer meant that the state of mind at any one moment directly influenced the state of mind that followed

There's nothing worse than a label to cement people's loyalties.

Whoever first gains the power to impose their own view decides the issue? Isn't that the definition of barbarism?

We'll shape them through their memes," he said. "We'll kill off the bad memes, and help spread the ones we want to succeed.

The wonderful thing about hope is that it has absolutely no effect on anything. Just throw the switch.

Many Americans resent evangelicals because they perceive us as thinking we have a right to rule them. That perception is not always unreasonable in light of the way many evangelical leaders spoke and acted throughout the twentieth century. This is one of the most important reasons Christianity has gradually lost influence over the past century. While the believers in the Christian