Quotes About Influence

narratives are major vectors of rapid change in culture, in zeitgeist, and in economic behavior.

Certainly some researchers are thinking more realistically about the market's prospects and reaching better-informed positions on its future, but these are not the names that grab the headlines and thus influence public attitudes.

traditional economic approaches fail to examine the role of public beliefs in major economic events—that is, narrative. By incorporating an understanding of popular narratives into their explanations of economic events, economists will become more sensitive to such influences when they forecast the future. In doing so, they will give policymakers better tools for anticipating and dealing with these developments.

Some men […] choose to seek greatness, while others are forced to it. It is always better to choose than to be forced. A man who is forced is never completely his own master. He must dance on the strings of those who forced him.

A wise ruler takes advice, but should never be seen to take it. Let them think you know more than you do. It will not harm them, and it will help you.

Men, Thom murmured. Men who shook the pillars of heaven and rocked the world on its foundations. He shook his head. It doesn't matter. Forget about them. They are dust now.

Some said Delana was sucessful as a mediator because both sides would agree just to make her stop staring at them.

No. Please do not name either child after me, Elayne. Let them live their own lives. My shadow will be long enough as it is.' -Rand

The more power a man held, the more likely he was to be an idiot with it.

I grew up around strong women; weak men were pickled and salted. The women wouldn't waste time raising a weak boy.

Let most men have a finger and they will have the whole hand before you know. Let a clan cheif have a finger and he will have the entire arm.

Blood and bloody ashes. Even dead women treated him the way Nynaeve did. Where did they learn it? Were there secret lessons?

Women were glad when he came into their lives. It was not boasting. Women smiled for him; even when he left them, they smiled as if they would welcome him back. That was all he ever really wanted from women; a smile, a dance, a kiss, and to be remembered foundly.

It is all right to hate them, Egwene. It is. They deserve it. But it isn't all right to let them make you like they are.

He hadn't asked to become a leader, but did that absolve him of responsibility? People needed him. The world needed him. And, with an understanding that cooled in him like molten rock forming into a shape, he realized that he wanted to lead. If someone had to be lord of these people, he wanted to do it himself. Because doing it yourself was the only way to see that it was done right.

You do not realize what it means that you force the form of the Age Lace, do you? The ripples of your actions, the ripples of your very existence, spread across the threads of which you will never be aware. The battle is far from yours alone. Yet you stand in the heart of this web in the Pattern. Should you fail, and fall, all fails and fall.

she knew that showing nerves could infect others with them.

Men listened closer to calm tones than to the loudest shouts, so long as firmness and certainty accompanied the calm.

In any trade, you needed to make the other fellow think he was getting something extra

Women were always happy for a chance to educate a boy when he was young; Mat thought they assumed they could educate him out of becoming a man if they tried hard enough.

When the fishmongers are all buying at the same price, you can bet they were all drinking at the same inn last night.

She probably told the thunder to be quiet. It probably did.

But sometimes the change chooses you, or the Wheel chooses it for you. And sometimes the Wheel bends a life-thread, or several threads, in such a way that all the surrounding threads are forced to swirl around it, and those force other threads, and those still others, and on and on.

Sometimes, it was difficult to tell Nynaeve leading from Nynaeve bullying.