Quotes About Influence

Consequences are that heavy TV viewers trust other people less, and join fewer voluntary organizations, than do people who are not heavy TV viewers. Before blaming TV-viewing for those behaviors, one might object: which is the cause and which is the result, or are the two sets of phenomena just correlated without either being the cause of the other?

Why did history unfold differently on different continents?

In the Middle Ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe, rather than from Europe to Islam as it is today. Only after around A.D. 1500 did the net direction of flow begin to reverse.

Descendants of those societies that achieved centralized government and organized religion earliest ended up dominating the modern world. The combination of government and religion has thus functioned, together with germs, writing, and technology, as one of the four main sets of proximate agents leading to history's broadest pattern.

Great-Man" view of the British historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), who asserted that history is dominated by the deeds of great men, such as Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great.

the author Leo Tolstoy, who maintained that leaders and generals had minimal influence on the course of history. To make his point, Tolstoy included in his novel War and Peace fictitious accounts of battles in which generals issue orders, but the orders are irrelevant to what is actually happening on the battlefield.

averaged over many cases, leadership does tend to affect economic growth.

leaders sometimes make a difference. But it depends on the type of leader, and on the type of effect examined.

It's the exclusive home of 1,000 of the world's approximately 7,000 languages. It holds the largest number of societies that even in modern times still lay beyond the control of state government or were only recently influenced by state government. Its populations span a range of traditional lifestyles, from nomadic hunter-gatherers, seafarers, and lowland sago specialists to settled Highland farmers, composing groups ranging from a few dozen to 200,000 people.

I AM WHO I AM IN SPITE OF MY MOTHER, BUT I ALSO AM WHO I AM BECAUSE OF HER.

On this voyage, you will witness the marvels that this city has brought the world. It

Geography shapes history; men only add a little colour to its surface.

The devious manipulation of sheep, otherwise known as politics.

It's not quite true that history is written by the winners. It's written by the best publicists on the winning team.

An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter. A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself. Who's the better writer?

Don't let anyone tell you the future is already written. The best any prophet can do is to give you the most likely version of future events. It is up to us to accept the future for what it is, or change it. It is easy to go with the flow; it takes a person of singular courage to go against it.

Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.

Do you really think you'd win a PR war against a bunch of committed librarians?' He thought about this, but he knew I was right. The libraries were a treasured institution and so central to everyday life that government and commerce rarely did anything that might upset them.Some say they were more powerful than the military, or, if not, they were certainly quieter. As they say: Don't mess with librarians. Only they use a stronger word than 'mess'...

Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.

I liked him, but since his particular field of interest was Remote Suggestion--the skill of projecting thoughts into people's heads from a distance--I didn't know whether I actually liked him or he was just suggesting I like him, which was both creepy and unethical. In fact, the whole Remote Suggestion or seeding idea had been banned once it was discovered to be the key ingredient in promoting talent less boy bands, which had until then been something of a mystery.

Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time. I would give everything to ensure the novel's survival.

Governments might come and go, wars will reshape the Ununited Kingdoms many times. But companies will stay, and flourish. Show me any major even on this planet and I will show you the economic reason behind it. Commerce is all powerful, Miss Strange. Commerce rules our lives.

Now and again. Good residency is about having the power to ask someone to do something, but not necessarily exercising it.

Las premoniciones se cumplen porque la gente quiere que se cumplan. Un observador siempre cambia el resultadi de un acontecimiento; millines de observadores, como en este caso, lo garantizan.