Quotes About Influence

I shall grow up to be a tall, graceful, and altogether beautiful woman, and I shall impose on large numbers of people my will and also, for my own amusement, great pain.

I had come to feel that my mother's love for me was designed solely to make me into an echo of her; and I didn't know why, but I felt that I would rather be dead than become just an echo of someone.

Je suis si vulnérable aux besoins et à l'influence des membres de ma famille que de temps en temps je m'en tiens à l'écart. Je ne leur écris pas. Je ne leur rends pas visite. Je ne mens pas, je ne nie pas, je me tiens seulement à l'écart.

I did not care about being a virgin and had long been looking forward to the day when I could rid myself of that status, but when I saw how much it mattered to him to be the first boy I had been with, I could not five him such a hold over me.

Everybody knew that men have no morals, that they do not know how to behave, that they do not know how to treat other people. It was why men like laws so much; it was why they had to invent such things-they need a guide. When they are not sure what to do, they consult this guide. If the guide gives them advice they don't like, they change the guide.

Opinions, opinions, the King once said, what would the world cherish most, if not for my opinions?"

He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.

I am not willing that this discussion should close without mention of the value of a true teacher. Give me a log hut, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus and libraries without him.

There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck or running a business or bringing up a family. The teach the truth by living it.

T]he minds of men are mirrors to one another' (T 365), Hume remarked, and just as mirrors are not in control of the reflections they give, so also our feelings, and beliefs, cannot help but be impinged upon by the feelings and beliefs of those around us.

A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.

Live deliberately. Decide: are you the kind of person things happen to, or the kind of person who makes things happen?

on D. W. Griffith] There is not a man working in movies, or a man who cares for them, who does not owe Griffith more than he owes anybody else.

It's easy these days to buy a nation, but it's quite difficult to take it by force.

Mortmain is an old French word that should be tattooed on the inside of any historical novelist's skull. This wonderful and terrible word means "dead hand." Its definition is: "The influence of the past regarded as controlling the present." (It is also used as a legal term with the same basic meaning.

The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good.

A sweet and happy soul is the ripened fruit of experience and wisdom, and it sheds abroad the invisible yet powerful aroma of its influence, gladdening the hearts of others, and purifying the world.

Mind is the master-power that moulds and makes.

A man has to learn that he cannot command things, but that he can command himself that he cannot coerce the wills of others, but that he can mold and master his own will: and things serve him who serves Truth people seek guidance of him who is master of himself.

A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.

Mike was very good at making sure all roads led to him. He set himself up very intelligently. He was the guy who could get your kids into the best private schools; he was the guy who could get you into the best hospitals. We didn't know it at the time, but he had a personal press guy, same one as Donald Trump—Howard Rubenstein—and this guy engineered a big Wall Street Journal story.

You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way ... people look at reality, then you can change it.

If there's any interaction between genes and languages, it is often languages that influence genes, since linguistic differences between populations lessen the chance of genetic exchange between them.

Tell me," Big Angel said. "Did I do anything good in your life?" "You gave me the books." It was instantaneous. "Yes. All the books--that was pretty good. I gave you good ones." "And bad ones." "True. But all books are good, man. Imagine no books.