Quotes About Influence

The two factors that will influence you the most in the years ahead are the books you read and the people you're around.

But he didn't have to listen to his father. Taking after your father was optional, wasn't it?

But you tell me when there has ever been a reign of terror that wasn't instigated by intellectuals and presided over by someone possessed of the madness of the artist.

In my experience people who can't stop making jokes about their identity aren't easy with it. The man of the world accepts who he is and the influences which have made him, and then gets on with living in the world.

When it's really fashionable, there's something wrong. An actor once came up to me and said, "I'm a Meth. . ." and he mumbled something. I said, "Get out of here. I don't want that around. It's too corrupt.

Although it is not as famous as Kuhn's SSR, Bas van Fraassen's book The Scientific Image (1980) has certainly had a profound effect on the philosophy of science

Latour examines Pasteur and his influence in The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), translated by Alan Sheridan and John Law.

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.

the planets show what is happening, the signs how it is happening, and the houses where it is happening.

Large or small, our actions forge our futures, hopefully inspiring others along the way.

I've said often that every enterprise and organization has a memory. And those memories create a path for people to follow.

But I do think effective leaders share two intertwined attributes: an unbridled level of confidence about where their organizations are headed, and the ability to bring people along.

And then you go to college and some teacher says to you, "Hey, why don't you go to Alvin Ailey and go dance." Madonna: No, he said, "You're too good for this. You don't need this. This is an environment for people who don't know what they want to do with their lives. Go. Go to New York.

The reason he has a billion and a half followers today is because he is alive, speaks, and heals today.

Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you.

It is curious how one's cup may be filled up by another and no words are passed to indicate the process that is taking place. . . It was as if, for a moment, I had been brushed by the angel's wing.

It is never to be forgotten that one of the ways by which men measure their own significance is to be found in the amount of power and energy other men must use in order to crush them or hold them back.

He recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a man's reaction to things that determines their ability to exercise power over him.

The English imposed their language on Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and they weren't terribly nice about it.

Wherever it's spoken, Gaelic sounds like a combination of Swedish and Hebrew.

Giving up embedded theology (even when necessary) is often painful. Could this be because we believe that if we disregard certain theological beliefs, we are somehow showing disrespect to those who were so instrumental in shaping our faith?

History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.