Quotes About Influence

A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.

I don't think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am. I don't think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star

You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the time when they need them. Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

Every woman artist has to kill her own grandmother. She perches on our shoulder whispering, Don't embarrass the family.

The truth is: nobody bothers to kill poets in America. It's enough to buy them in universities. Undead.

Adolescents, malgré les données d'intelligence et de tempérament, nous sommes en grande partie fabriqués par notre éducation, notre milieu, nos parents ; adultes, nous nous fabriquons par nos choix.

Il y a des hommes qui ont le pouvoir de raconter des histoires que chacun croit être siennes : ce sont les écrivains. »

Compiere un'azione notevole è meglio che essere notati».

J'admets la part de l'autre dans la constitution de mon destin.

Jeden przesÄ…d wypiera drugi. KiedyÅ› ludzie wierzyli, bo ich do tego nakÅ'aniano. DziÅ› z tego samego powodu wÄ…tpiÄ…. W obydwu przypadkach wyobra?ajÄ… sobie, ?e myÅ›lÄ…, cho? tylko powtarzajÄ…, prze?uwajÄ… opinie, doktryny dla mas, przekonania, których by? mo?e by nie podzielali, gdyby siÄ™ zastanowili.

Un homme certain, c'est un homme armé. Un homme certain que l'on contredit, c'est dans l'instant un assassin. Il tue le doute. Sa persuasion lui donne le pouvoir de nier sans débat ni regret. Il pense avec un lance-flamme. Il affirme au canon.

The outer chains have simply been put inside of man. The desires and thoughts that the suggestion apparatus of society fills him with, chain him more thoroughly than outer chains.

It is desirable to avoid trivial and evil company altogether—unless one can assert oneself fully, and thus make the other doubt his own position.

What matters is the effect, not the process.

Authority is not a quality one person 'has,' in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.

But man is not only made by history—history is made by man.

I feel like people start to believe things that people say about them and start to think they're really important. If you have a family that is down to earth and cool, I don't see how you can be like that.

Your "family of origin" (as her online therapist called them) could be toxic and strange, but they were yours: you could not escape them, for better or worse.

women had more prominence and power in society in the third millennium bce than they did 2,000 years later.

I told him a story, Calista. People will follow you anywhere if you tell them a tale they desperately want to believe. It's astonishing, really, how gullible even the most skeptical person can be if he or she wants to believe.

parents can take neither all of the blame nor all of the glory for how their offspring turn out. In the end, she said, all of us must take responsibility for ourselves.

Might never know, because she was one of those people who would always be defined by the way others perceived her.