Quotes About Influence

you can't bribe the history to talk about you

Independente de qualquer crença religiosa, o simples fato de vivermos numa nação que faz parte do Ocidente judaico-cristão já nos torna herdeiros da linguagem bíblica. Estamos impregnados de suas historias e seus ensinamentos.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

I would define a book as a work of magic whence escape, all kinds of images to trouble the souls and change the hearts of men.

No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work.

A rotten fish spoils all the fish in the basket.

Whom do we speak to, and how do we encode our messages? How can we be heard or read, even after we are dead?

Who taught you to swear first? Who burst your head wide open with a sentence? Whose linguistic tics have you ingested, do you know, bust out without thinking

keep this one thing at the front of your mind: subjective judgments are inherently vulnerable to all sorts of biases.

You recently read me a quote by Faulkner: "The past isn't dead, it's not even past." So much of our adult lives is influenced by what happened to us as children. It is all still there, the memories, the feelings, and fears, stored just beneath the surface in the hidden crannies of our cortex.

We ike to think we are our own people, but sometimes it seems we are just playing out a script that was imprinted in us along ago.

He was forceful, domineering, and supremely sure of himself. When you have low self-esteem, as I did, those qualities are attractive.

Whether the world be good or evil I cannot say, but I am certain that it is men like Bazin who make it a better place. For, in believing life to be good and behaving accordingly, André had a beneficial effect on all who came in contact with him, and one could count on the fingers of one hand those who behaved badly toward him.

But does one not, when coming out of an Italian film, feel better, an urge to change the order of things, preferably by persuading people, at least those who can be persuaded, whom only blindness, prejudice, or ill-fortune had led to harm their fellow men?

But, of course, of course, I imitated everyone! Except myself. -- Pablo Picasso

Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Modern history, both early and late, was made by Europeans, who "built a world around Europe", as historians "know", according to Braudel. That is indeed the "knowledge" of the European historians who themselves "invented" history and then put it to good use. There is not even an inkling of suspicion that it may have been the other way around, that maybe it was the world that made Europe.

I am confident that future historical research will confirm that the expansion of the capitalist system over the past century has effectively and entirely penetrated even the apparently most isolated sectors of the underdeveloped world.

Men and women are not born inconstant: they are made so by their early amorous experiences.

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.

People are what you make them. A scornful look turns into a complete fool a man of average intelligence. A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel.