Quotes About Influence

De ware schuldige is niet degene die zich gedwongen ziet een dergelijke keuze te maken; de schuld ligt bij degenen die de omstandigheden hebben geschapen waarin zulke keuzes moeten worden gemaakt".

Peace is not a spectator sport

the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.

True leadership requires the capacity to shape public opinion, not merely reflect it.

The purpose of foreign policy is to influence the policies and actions of other nations in a way that serves your interests and values. The tools available include everything from kind words to cruise missiles. Mixing them properly and with sufficient patience is the art of diplomacy.

President Trump's eyes light up when strongmen steamroll opposition, brush aside legal constraints, ignore criticism, and do whatever it takes to get their way.

There are two kinds of Fascists: those who give orders and those who take them. A popular base gives Fascism the legs it needs to march, the lungs it uses to proclaim, and the muscle it relies on to menace—but that's Fascism from the neck down. To create tyranny out of the fears and hopes of average people, money is required, and so, too, ambition and twisted ideas.

The answer matters because, although nature abhors a vacuum, Fascism welcomes one.

I TELL MY STUDENTS THAT THE FUNDAMENTAL PURPOSE OF FOREIGN policy is elementary: to convince other countries to do what we would like them to do.

In those moments, many of us no longer want to be asked, "What do you think?" We want to be told where to march. That is when Fascism gets its start: other options don't seem enough.

First, he often endorses actions by foreign leaders that weaken democratic institutions.

MUSSOLINI OBSERVED THAT IN SEEKING TO ACCUMULATE POWER, it is wise to do so in the manner of one plucking a chicken—feather by feather—so each squawk is heard apart from every other and the whole process is kept as muted as possible.

A speechmaker's gravest sin is to leave the listener indifferent. I was determined not to be dull.

that for Fascism to extend its reach from the streets to the high offices of state, it must secure backing from multiple sectors of society.

Mussolini was not an original thinker, but he was a gifted actor who could play a role.

the Fascist chiefs we remember best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the surface.

Führer would soon make all things right.

Why has the United States—at least temporarily—abdicated its leadership in world affairs?

Years before taking office, Hitler told his fellow Nazis, "The Constitution only maps out the arena of the battle, not the goal… once we possess constitutional power, we will mold the state into the shape we hold to be suitable.

Thomas Edison hailed him as the "genius of the modern age"; Gandhi, as a "superman." Winston Churchill pledged to stand by him in his "struggle against the bestial appetites of Leninism." Newspapers in Rome, host to the Vatican, referred to him as "the incarnation of God." In the end, people who had worshipped [Benito Mussolini's] every move hung his corpse upside down next to his mistress's near a gas station in Milan.

She said the music made her wonder, Does it alter us more to be heard, or to hear?

For life is the mirror of king and slave, 'Tis just what we are and do Then give to the world the best you have, And the best will come back to you.

You touch the world even if you do not want it to touch you. -Leona Montgomery

Parents who have more than one child are very aware that, while we certainly have an impact on our child's development, it has as much to do with them as with us. "I can't believe how different my kids are" should inform us that child development is an uneven process only partly tied to parenting (and no one knows exactly how much that "partly" is).