Quotes about Influence

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

But is it coincidence? Are there not subtle forces at work of which we know little?

The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish.

Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood. That's rather a broad idea, I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature

There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions.

No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of serious error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch of knowledge where it is necessary to take large views; because wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to arrive at maturity.

There is no absurdity so palpable that one could not fix it firmly in the head of every man on earth provided one began to imprint it before his sixth year by ceaselessly rehearsing it before him with solemn earnestness.

The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every feeling of humanity.

although the absurd, as a rule, predominates, and it seems impossible that the voice of the individual can ever penetrate through the chorus of the befooling and the befooled, there yet remains to the genuine works of every age a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and powerful influence...

A man strives to get direct mastery over things either by understanding them or by compulsion. But a woman is always and everywhere driven to indirect mastery, namely through a man; all her direct mastery being limited to him alone.

Just as the faults of princes must be expiated by whole nations, the errors of great minds extend their influence over whole generations and even over centuries. They grow and propagate themselves, and finally degenerate into monstrosities. All this arises from the fact that as Berkeley says: "few men think, yet all will have opinions.