Quotes About Influence

It had nothing to do with changing people—forget that, on a good day you're lucky if you can talk someone into changing their socks.

There's an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: "Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape." Is there a richer or more complex story than that?

It was as if I'd learned to grieve by watching television:

There's an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: "Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

Nu avea nimic de-a face cu a schimba oamenii - uitati de asta, intr-o zi esti norocos si doar daca convingi pe cineva sa-si schimbe sosetele.

My dad was like the Marine Corps. Only instead of tearing you to pieces and then putting you back together, he just did the first part and called it a day. Now it seems cruel, abusive even, but this all happened before the invention of self-esteem, which frankly, I think is a little overrated.

A lot of our outlawed terms were invented by black people and then picked up by whites, who held on to them way past their expiration date. "My bad," for example, and "I've got your back" and "You go, girlfriend." They're the verbal equivalents of sitcom grandmothers high-fiving one another, and on hearing them, I wince and feel ashamed of my entire race.

In a roomful of shouting people, the one who whispers becomes interesting.' (Peter Schimdt)

In a roomful of shouting people, the one who whispers becomes interesting.

The medium by which the suicide contagion spread was mass media.

We tend to think of the Norman Conquest as the turning point in the history of England. But the Saxon Conquest was even more important, since it created both the reality and the idea of England itself.

People don't always go down in history for the vigor with which they perform their jobs. We remember Louis the Fifteenth . . . for his furniture; we remember Pierre Léotard, despite his being the greatest trapeze artist ever, for his leotard. The idea is to give your name to something, like the zeppelin, the newton, Morse code, the chicuelina .

Los gobiernos no pueden dar nada que no les hayan arrancado antes a sus ciudadanos.

it caused one of Douglass's most challenging psychic dilemmas. He repeatedly faced the question of how uncompromising radicalism could mix with a learned pragmatism to try to influence real power, to determine how to condemn the princes and their laws but also influence and eventually join them.

When the influence of office or any other influence shall soften my hatred of tyranny and violence do not spare me; let fall upon me the lash of your keenest and most withering censure. —FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1879

A peculiar illusion of global omnipotence emerged in the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And you were of the opinion propaganda has to make sense to be effective?

Hamish Alexander stood on Benjamin the Great 's flag deck with his hands clasped behind him and tried very hard not to feel a sense of godlike power.

The purpose of shooting someone as an object lesson is to convince other people to pay attention to it, and that takes time.

had to know if this zodiac cycle was still at work today. It didn't take long to discover that these cycle connections between

Power is only an aphrodisiac for the living dead

Central Bankers are driving us to Hell in a vehicle We are paying the installments on

If dogs talked, one of them would be president by now. Everybody likes dogs.

No, if there's any ultimate redemption, it would be because I passed though your life without scarring you, and did not diminish who you are.