Quotes About Influence

Add your light to the sum of light.

Those are the men,' added Bolkonsky with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they went out of the palace, 'those are the men who decide the fate of nations.

Do not be interested in the quantity of people who respect and admire you, but in their quality. If bad people dislike you, so much the better. —LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA

Women have made of themselves such a weapon to act upon the senses that a young man, and even an old man, cannot remain tranquil in their presence. Watch a popular festival, or our receptions or ball-rooms. Woman well knows her influence there. You will see it in her triumphant smiles.

But women, my boy, they're the pivot everything turns upon.

We won't be friends, you know that yourself. And whether we will be the happiest or the unhappiest of people - is in your power.

The most important acts, both for the one who accomplishes them and for his fellow creatures, are those that have remote consequences.

History – the amorphous, unconscious life within the swarm of humanity – exploits every minute in the lives of kings as an instrument for the attainment of its own ends.

The view of life adopted by these people, my literary associates, was that generally speaking life is a process of development in the course of which the most important role is played by us, the thinkers; and that among the thinkers it is we, the artists and poets, who have the most influence. Our vocation is to educate people. In order to avoid being confronted by the obvious question - 'What do I know and what have I got to teach?

And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

In historical events great men - so-called - are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connexion with the event itself.

The Jew is that sacred being, who has brought down from Heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions.

I'll come some day," he said. "But women, my boy, they're the pivot everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it's all through women. Tell me frankly now," he pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; "give me your advice.

A thought can advance your life in the right direction only when it answers questions which were asked by your soul. A thought which was first borrowed from someone else and then accepted by your mind and memory does not really much influence your life, and sometimes leads you in the wrong direction. Read less, study less, but think more. Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.

What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people. That is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

Influence in society, however, is capital which has to be economized if it is to last. Prince

What is music? What does it do to us? And why does it do to us what it does? People say that music has an uplifting effect on the soul: what rot! It isn't true. It's true that it has an effect, it has a terrible effect on me, at any rate, but it has nothing to do with any uplifting of the soul. Its effect on the soul is neither uplifting nor degrading — it merely irritates me.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized if it is to last.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever women.

What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?

Kings are the slaves of history. History, that is, the unconscious, swarmlike life of mankind, uses every moment of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes.

Yes, what would Russia be without me?" he [Tsar Nicholas I] said to himself, again sensing the approach of the unpleasant feeling. "Yes, what would, not just Russia, but Europe be without me?" And he remembered his brother-in-law, the king of Prussia, and his weakness and stupidity and shook his head.

It never before happened that the rich ruling and more educated minority, which has the most influence on the masses, not only disbelieved the existing religion but was convinced that no religion is no longer needed.

the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which should flow from it—a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to England and America alike.