Quotes About Influence

Genes do amazing things inside our bodies, but even more amazing to me is what they do outside of them. Genes affect not only the structure and function of our bodies; not only the structure and function of our minds and, hence, our behaviors; but also the structure and function of our societies.

Groupthink encourages conformity and this consistently leads back to trusting and following the leader, for it is through him or her that their cause will be achieved.

Napoleon was now one of the crowned heads of Europe.

Wind was a major factor. Even a light breeze could upset the invasion barges,

the teeth marks he left in it on the day of Trafalgar are visible still.

In the long run a medium's content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act. As our window onto the world, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it-and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and as a society.

Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.

Descartes may have been wrong about dualism, but he appears to have been correct in believing that our thoughts can exert a physical influence on, or at least cause a physical reaction in, our brains. We become, neurologically, what we think.

It's the new technologies that govern production and consumption, that guide people's behavior and shape their perceptions.

we program our computers and thereafter they program us. Even

the computer is never a neutral tool. It influences, for better or worse, the way a person works and thinks.

As long as algorithms determine the distribution of profits, they will also determine what gets published. The

Through our tools, we seek to expand our power and control over our circumstances—over nature, over time and distance, over one another.

Google, says its CEO, is more than a mere business; it is a "moral force.

Rather than allowing technology to control us, Mumford implied, we can control technology—if only we can muster the courage to exert the full power of our free will over the machines we make.

the path of technological progress and its human consequences are determined not simply by advances in science and engineering but also, and more decisively, by the influence of technology on the costs of producing and consuming goods and services. A competitive marketplace guarantees that more efficient modes of production and consumption will win out over less efficient ones.

Between the intellectual and behavioral guardrails set by our genetic code, the

What both enthusiast and skeptic miss is what McLuhan saw: that in the long run a medium's content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act.

The internet, as its proponents rightly remind us, makes for variety and convenience; it does not force anything on you. Only it turns out it doesn't feel like that at all. We don't feel as if we had freely chosen our online practices. We feel instead that they are habits we have helplessly picked up or that history has enforced, that we are not distributing our attention as we intend or even like to."1

We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. —John M. Culkin

You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.

What matters to the children's well-being isn't so much the level of the family's wealth as whether it is controlled by the mother or the father.

When women could vote, suddenly their lives became more important, and enfranchising women ended up providing a huge and unanticipated boost to women's health.

Some 60 million Americans live in a rural America that is suffering, and the U.S. political architecture gives the frustrations of these rural Americans disproportionate political influence.