Quotes About Influence

Voltaire might say, "I have no scepter, but I have a pen.

The division of our month into four weeks, of our clock into twelve hours (instead of twenty-four), of our hour into sixty minutes, and of our minute into sixty seconds, are unsuspected Babylonian vestiges in our contemporary world.XVI

The Bourbons might have preserved themselves," said Napoleon, "if they had controlled writing materials. The advent of cannon killed the feudal system; ink will kill the modern social organization.

On his tombstone only three words were necessary: HERE LIES VOLTAIRE

Is it not shameful that men should be ruled by orators, who "go ringing on in long harangues, like brazen pots which, when struck, continue to sound till a hand is put upon them"?

A man's shortcomings," said Goethe, "are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.

At the other end of the scale history reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

Before Aristotle, science was in embryo; with him it was born.

Sumeria was to Babylonia, and Babylonia to Assyria, what Crete was to Greece, and Greece to Rome:

Government and History

On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.

There is, again, a "Multiplication of Effects": one cause may produce a vast variety of results, and help to differentiate the world; a word amiss, like Marie Antoinette's, or an altered telegram at Ems, or a wind at Salamis, may play an endless rôle in history.

Our children bring us up by showing us, through imitation, what we really are.

justice is the interest of the stronger

No es la raza la que crea la civilización, es la civilización la que crea el pueblo: las circunstancias geográficas, económicas y políticas crean una cultura, y la cultura crea un tipo humano.

for now though our investigation into how future enters and then changes us must return to the idea of the self as a storyteller. In doing so we will realize just how porous the boundary is really is between the stories that surround us and the story that is us.

You have to realize just because things don't have tangible reality, that doesn't mean they don't exist. Ideas are just as real as people and property. Ideas have changed the world profoundly to an extent most people never approach - Father Beale

Powers is the greatest aphrodisiac. -Nicole Muldoon

The following Discourse [on art, by Sir Joshua Reynolds] is particularly Interesting to Blockheads as it endeavours to prove that There is No such thing as Inspiration & that any Man of a plain Understanding may by Thieving from Others become a Mich Angelo.

We all possess, like it or not, the people we know, and are possessed by them in turn.

Romer's idea, like all good ideas, was very simple: false information can be just as useful, influential, as telling, transforming or as damaging as true information.

Charbonneau was an interesting, amusing and provocative man and I like to think he brought out the best in me, also. Even two minutes in his company provided some comment or observation that would make me laugh or make me violently disagree with him and so those two minutes of my day were well spent as a consequence.

rather, it recognizes that social structures influence the thoughts, decisions, and actions of individuals (Sibeon 2004). The theoretical model presented here is strongly influenced by Weber and Bourdieu.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI The Prince Standard year circa 1513