Quotes About Influence

When a subculture is heading in the wrong direction, it is up to the adults of the larger culture to steer it back in the right direction.

They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.

They leaned towards him, like flowers to the sun, drinking in his luster. It was as Odysseus had said: he had light enough to make heroes of them all.

Later Achilles would play the lyre, as Chiron and I listened. My mother's lyre. He had brought it with him. 'I wish I had known,' I said, the first day when he showed it to me. 'I almost did not come, because I did not want to believe it.' He smiled. 'Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere.

The words slid into me, smooth as a polished knife.

Indeed, he seemed utterly unaware of his effect on the boys around him.

We are men only, a brief flare of the torch. Those to come may raise us or lower us as they please.

Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. I thought: this is how Zeus felt when he first lifted the thunderbolt.

she was not ruled by appetites; she ruled with them instead.

His presence was like a stone in my shoe, impossible to ignore.

She thought that she had power to drive a wedge between us, but she had nothing.

you may have what girls you like in the field, but you will bring none home, for only I will hold sway in your halls.

When he talked, he was lawyer and bard and crossroads charlatan at once, arguing his case, entertaining, pulling back the veil to show you the secrets of the world. It was not just his words, though they were clever enough. It was everything together: his face, his gestures, the sliding tones of his voice. I would say it was like a spell he cast, but there was no spell I knew that could equal it. The gift was his alone.

Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow.

In every contact with every other human in every day of your life, you become what you sense they want of you or, if you are motivated the other way, exactly what they do not want.

If insanity is contagious, and it is, so is sanity. Sanity is more contagious than insanity. It's just that there aren't enough carriers. Become a source of infectious sanity.

Humility is the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself.

Without a life example that speaks louder than words, even the most persuasive leader will fail.

The addition of the typewriter to the printing-press has given a new and horrible impetus to the spread of half-baked thought.

Tis Fate that flings the dice, And as she flings Of kings makes peasants, And of peasants kings.

Fools are more hard to conquer than persuade.

What passion cannot music raise or quell

What cannot Praise effect in Mighty Minds, When Flattery Sooths, and when Ambition Blinds!

May the student in you become the teacher for another