Quotes About Impact

Strange, that Earthpeople always follow one who is not wise, but merely compelling.

We used to think the world was so big. So indestructible. So fun. We still can't completely believe that it is as small and serious, as threatened and vulnerable, as we have made it.

we might be able to intellectually understand that the West has lost 18% of its trees over the last 20 years, and at the same time be overcome by the quaking of a single Aspen leaf.

One of the reasons people steer clear of environmentalism is all the guilt associated with it. The creepy feeling that by doing what everyone else in one's society is doing - driving, washing the dishes, catching a flight - we are bringing about the end of the world.

It is an example of what films can do, how they can slip past your defenses and really break your heart.

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. —CARL JUNG

A human being unable to have a meaningful impact on the world ceases to exist.

If no one had an army, armies would not be needed. But the same can be said of most lobbyists, PR specialists, telemarketers, and corporate lawyers. Also, like literal goons, they have a largely negative impact on society. I think almost anyone would concur that, were all telemarketers to disappear, the world would be a better place.

In fact, it often happens that, at the very top of organizations, apparently crucial positions can go unfilled for long periods of time without there being any noticeable effect—even, on the organization itself.

most people who do a great deal of harm in the world are protected against the knowledge that they do so.

ancient Rome had conquered the world three times: the first time through its armies, the second through its religion, the third through its laws.91 He might have added: each time more thoroughly.

Still, I suspect they would all have agreed on at least two things: first, that the most important things one gets out of a job are (1) money to pay the bills, and (2) the opportunity to make a positive contribution to the world. Second, that there is an inverse relation between the two. The more your work helps and benefits others, and the more social value you create, the less you are likely to be paid for it.

If 37 percent to 40 percent of jobs are completely pointless, and at least 50 percent of the work done in nonpointless office jobs is equally pointless, we can probably conclude that at least half of all work being done in our society could be eliminated without making any real difference at all.

We could easily become societies of leisure and institute a twenty-hour workweek. Maybe even a fifteen-hour week. Instead, we find ourselves, as a society, condemned to spending most of our time at work, performing tasks that we feel make no difference in the world whatsoever.

Silicon Valley is in the process of taking aim at health care, education, and the liberal professions as well.

Only one life 'Twill soon be past Only what's done For Christ will last.

The wealth we create is like a bonfire. If controlled, it can warm our families. If allowed to spread wildly, it can devastate.

Achievement comes to someone when he is able to do great things for himself. Success comes when he develops leaders to do great things for him. But a legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into the position to do great things without him. -John C. Maxwell, The Twenty-one Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

is. I think our fundamental Anthropocene dilemma is that we have achieved global impact but have no mechanisms for global self-control. So, to the (debatable) extent that we are like some kind of global organism, we are still a pretty clumsy one, crashing around with little situational awareness,

A single moment that lasts a lifetime, still poisoning anything I come close to, to this day. Every person I touch.

the little things were not little things, because it was the accumulation of little things that made big things happen.

Until he (Time's founder Henry Luce) arrived, news was crime and politics.

Fresh from the rarefied environments of Harvard, the author says he purposefully took journalism jobs in small southern towns so that he could learn the art of conversation with ordinary people. Is this gift for listening and for conversation, it seems, that allowed him to produce textured historical narratives of grand impact.

he was so obsessed by the action in front of him that he had no awareness of the growing reaction to his performance.