Quotes About Influence

We think of Rome as an empire in a way that we do not use for other nations. The others are pretenders. Rome stands alone. Throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Near East its wreckage still draws the traveler and speaks a message that is haunting: this was imperial, this was lasting, this is gone.

His world was small, an illiterate county seat, a backward state, though from it he fashioned something greater, far greater perhaps than he ever knew. A writer cannot really grasp what he has written. It is not like a building or a sculpture; it cannot be seen whole. It is only a kind of smoke seized and printed on a page.

They were seated to one side, but to be with her was to be seen by everyone.

Beneath their brilliance women have a power as stars have gravity.

Malone's commentary on Sonnet 93 was a defining moment in the history not only of Shakespeare studies but also of literary biography in general. What has emerged in our time as a dominant form of life writing can trace its lineage back to this extended footnote.

Shakespeare had no Boswell–but neither did Marlowe, Jonson, Webster or any other contemporary dramatist.

As Melvin Laird, his Defense Secretary, recalled, Every effort was made to create an economic boom for the 1972 election. The Defense Department, for example, bought a two-year supply of toilet paper. We ordered enough trucks . . . for the next several years.48 Congress, too, propelled election-year spending by its approval of sharp hikes in Social Security benefits: some $8 billion in extra checks went out in October.

GM had assets greater than those of Argentina and revenues eight times those of New York State. (Defense Secretary Wilson had had a point in saying that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.)

For political matters Kennedy relied heavily on able strategists—critics called them the Irish Mafia—such as Kenneth O'Donnell and Lawrence O'Brien.

what a community erects on its historical landscape not only sums up its view of the past but also influences its possible futures.

As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols of the Iroquois League. Although one arrow is easily broken, no one can break six (or thirteen) at once. John

On Ho Chi Minh's desk in Hanoi on the day he died lay a biography of John Brown.

Publishers or those who influence them have evidently concluded that what American society needs to stay strong is citizens who assent to its social structure and economic system without thought.

He ended his description of them with these menacing words: "I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men and govern them as I pleased.

Words are important—they can influence, and in some cases rationalize, policy.

Education as socialization tells people what to think and how to act and requires them to conform. Education as socialization influences students simply to accept the rightness of our society.

The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class. —KWAME NKRUMAH

The finding that enduring religious belief systems make us more amenable to the commands of authority also is affirmed by the historical realities surrounding many cases of mass killing and genocide.

When you follow in the path of your father, you learn to walk like him. ~ Ashanti Proverb

He who thinks he is leading and has no one following him is only taking a walk. ~ Malawian Proverb

Caesar and Augustus both have months named after them (July for Julius Caesar and August for Augustus).

Newton's influence on science particularly and on eighteenth century culture in general was profound.  Few scientists after him would deny themselves the identity of being a "Newtonian", while his (apparent) application of rational thought to the solution of scientific problems became the model for the Enlightenment embrace of "rationalism".

Isn't the media supposed to keep government responsible?

The Buddhists succumbed to the Muslims, the British brought in Christianity, and now the Muslims decide one faction of their religion is better than the other.