Quotes About Influence

His best work bore the stamp of John O'Hara and John P. Marquand.

Zip. He's the most careful OC boss I've ever investigated. Nothing's committed to paper or computer or phone. He doesn't even give direct orders when he's alone with his crew. He hints, he

The popularity of an individual in life often only manifests itself in death.

Remember what Lyndon Johnson said about J. Edgar Hoover? I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.

How was it possible that he could handle Swiss bankers, West End impresarios, senior partners and seasoned solicitors, but was a quivering wreck in the presence of this man?

Doesn't ability to do the job come into the equation? Of course not, you fool, said Jimmy. This is politics.

Edgar Hoover? I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.

A police uniform, he was warned by the commander on his first day on parade, could change a person's personality, and not always for the better.

Doesn't ability to do the job come into the equation?' 'Of course not, you fool,' said Jimmy. 'This is politics.

God bless the Scots and their puritan upbringing

Eton has been known to bend the rules when it comes to members of the aristocracy

politics is nothing more than a rich man's hobby.

I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.

Dead men's words are so much more powerful than those of the living

he continued to think about his father. No son could have asked for a better mentor or friend. When he looked back on his life, all his actions, judgments and decisions were nothing more than pale imitations of his father's.

his old school that if there'd been

four very powerful corporate lobbies have repeatedly come out on top and turned our democracy into what might more accurately be called a corporatocracy.

The boundary between who you are and who they are becomes blurred. You might adopt other people's goals and opinions as your own. You might adopt other people's values. You might lose yourself in the other. There is a chance that you might subjugate yourself to a group, particularly a group with a charismatic leader. You might even find some attraction to cult groups.

But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.

Sourmelina's secret (as Aunt Zo put it): 'Lina was one of those women they named the island after.

My goal in life is to become an adjective, Leonard said. People would go around saying, 'That was so Bankheadian.' Or, 'A little too Bankheadian for my taste.

Even our parents seemed to agree more and more with the television version of things, listening to the reporters' inanities as though they could tell us the truth about our own lives.

They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us.

Often he had the impression that the person answering questions from the scratchy armchair was a dummy he was controlling, that this had been true throughout his life, and that his life had become so involved with operating the dummy that he, the ventriloquist, had ceased to have a personality, becoming just an arm stuffed up the puppet's back.