Quotes about Influence

The essence of Government is power and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.

The paradox in our relation to nature is that the more deeply a culture respects the indifference of nature, the more creatively it will call upon its own spontaneity in response. The more clearly we remind ourselves that we can have no unnatural influence on nature, the more our culture will embody a freedom to embrace surprise and unpredictability.

I can't think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one's grammar. It's a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I'm afraid.

You may say you won't interfere with another person's soul, but you do—merely by existing. The snag about it is the practical difficulty, so to speak, of not existing.

So she will, said the Dowager. You'll see that young man in the Cabinet before very long. Such a handsome couple on a public platform, and very sound, I'm told, about pigs, and that's so important, the British breakfast-table being what it is.

This, she felt, was her fault. Her idea in the first place. Her house. Her honeymoon. Her — and this was the incalculable factor in the thing — her husband. (A repressive word, that, when you came to think of it, compounded of a grumble and a thump.) The

Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilisation that made them.

Example is more powerful than precept.

Example is the best precept.