Quotes About Influence

Those two were never friends. But Grace Goodhue was right about Calvin Coolidge, her mother was wrong. It was love at first sight. She, however, probably saw him first. Not only was her social experience wider than his, her emotional intelligence was keener. So when her lover and her mother clashed, she followed her lover.

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you.

Leadership is based on inspiration, not domination; on cooperation, not intimidation.

if we seek social status, we give other people power over us: We have to do things calculated to make them admire us, and we have to refrain from doing things that will trigger their disfavor.

We are social creatures; we will be miserable if we try to cut off contact with other people. Therefore, if what we seek is tranquility, we should form and maintain relations with others. In doing so, though, we should be careful about whom we befriend. We should also, to the extent possible, avoid people whose values are corrupt, for fear that their values will contaminate ours. •

Henry David Thoreau, for example, doesn't directly mention Stoicism or any of the great Stoics in Walden, his masterpiece, but to those who know what to look for, the Stoic influence is present. In his Journal, Thoreau is more forthcoming. He writes, for example, that "Zeno the Stoic stood in precisely the same relation to the world that I do now.

Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.

They warn us to be careful in choosing our associates; other people, after all, have the power to shatter our tranquility—if we let them.

Notice that the advice that we ignore what other people think of us is consistent with the Stoic advice that we not concern ourselves with things we can't control.

Others may have it in their power to affect how and even whether you live, but they do not, say the Stoics, have it in their power to ruin your life. Only you can ruin it, by failing to live in accordance with the correct values. The Stoics believed in social reform, but they also believed in personal transformation.

The Stoics, for example, did not sit around apathetically, resigned to whatever the future held in store; to the contrary, they spent their days working to affect the outcome of future events.

Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nighTo learned Chaucer; and rare Beaumont, lieA little nearer Spenser; to make roomFor Shakespeare in your threefold fourfold tomb.

parasites seldom altogether abandon a monarch so long as the crown still glitters on his head. ("The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah")

All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgerize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.

Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.

You have to realize just because things don't have tangible reality, that doesn't mean they don't exist. Ideas are just as real as people and property. Ideas have changed the world profoundly to an extent most people never approach

The essence of civilization is that men should come to be led more by hope and ambition and example and less by fear.

The state is or can be master of money, but in a free society it is master of very little else.

Poetry fettered fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed, or flourish, in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish!

Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to.

On the other hand, I'm part of a movement which has a very, very ambitious goal of slowing down ... the American empire and keeping it from continuing to do the many terrible things it does all over the world. We have to reach the American public, and to do that we have to have access to the mass media.