Quotes About Influence

Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young child's mouth!

As the Greek said, 'Give me a long enough lever... and I can move the earth'!

Nature takes no notice of the thoughts of men.

It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour.

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!

It's not easy to separate a person from their programming.

I love my mom. I totally look up to her, and she just doesn't let anybody take advantage of me. People might call that a stage mom.

Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.

When have I, when have I ever forced anyone to do anything, he starts to say: but Richard cuts in, "No, you don't, I agree, it's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in the street and stamped on." -Richard (?) nee Cromwell to Thomas Cromwell,358

It was not by a serpent, but by paper and ink that evil came into the world.

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.

If kings do not see you, they forget you. Even though nothing in the realm is done without you, kings think they do it all themselves.

For hundreds of years the monks have held the pen, and what they have written is what we take to be our history, but I do not believe it really is. I believe they have suppressed the history they don't like, and written one that is favourable to Rome.' Henry

every monarch needs a blow on the head, from time to time.

Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: "I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works." When he suffers, as he does increasingly, from a distressing tightness of the chest and shortness of breath, and when his eyes seem too tired to focus on the printed page, the thought of the letter urges the weak flesh to more Works.

Suppose she denied him then but favored him some other time? Women are weak and easily conquered by flattery. Especially when men write verses to them, and there are some who sat that Wyatt writes better verses than me, though I am the King.

The king has great power, but he has no power to know me, except through what I say and what I do.

And indeed, who can doubt that everything would be different and better, if only England were ruled by village idiots and their drunken friends?

You can persuade the quick to think again, but you cannot remake your reputation with the dead.

It's just that you are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in street and stamped on.

He would have thought God could make his own decisions, but Weston believes the creator may be pushed and coaxed and maybe bribed a little.

What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold.

And the more the king snips and carps, the more do his petitioners seek out the company of Cromwell, so unfailing in his amiable courtesy. At home, Jo comes to him looking perplexed. She