Quotes About Influence

When someone tells me what he or she was doing the first time they heard a song of mine, then I've done a good job. If my song becomes about your life, then I'm successful.

If I could have a superpower, it'd be the ability to make all my enemies change their minds and see things MY way.

I have no control over certain elements of my story. I can nudge my characters/story line there, but can't make them behave the way I think they should, no matter how I try.

Only those of our poets who kept solidly to the Shakespearean tradition achieved any measure of success. But Keats was the last great exponent of that tradition, and we all know how thin, how lacking in charm, the copies of Keats have become.

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

The most direct and enduring way to reach the mind and imagination of the learner is through the mind, imagination and character of the outstanding teacher.

Not to fear a person with power--to profess, instead, one's love--is to deny that that person has power.

You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.

The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.

Human life is under the absolute dominion of two mighty principles, fear and hope, and that any one who can make these serve his ends may be sure of rapid fortune.

When technologies are in-between human users and natural prompters, we may qualify them as first-order (Figure 13). Listing first-order technologies is simple. The ones mentioned earlier all qualify. More can easily be added, such as the plough, the wheel, or the umbrella. The axe is probably the first and oldest kind of first-order technology. Nowadays, a wood-splitting axe is still a first-order technology between you, the user, and the wood, the prompter. A saddle is between you and a horse.

I was an elementary school teacher.

Children internalize their parents' unhappiness. Fortunately, they absorb our contentment just as readily.

Back in the 1960s, I saw Peter, Paul and Mary. I was at that age, about 14, and I was mesmerized.

The more I separate myself from my upbringing, the more I appreciate what it's done for me.

Let them hate so long as they fear.

Let them hate so long as they fear. (Oderint Dum Metuant)

Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

Wherever the Roman conquers, there he dwells.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

Fate leads the willing and drags along the unwilling.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

the fact that you'll never know what sort of person you might have been if you'd read different stuff