Quotes about Influence

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.

I am a reflection of my mother's secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers.

No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.

I'll listen if you want me to... But I think I should tell you now that nothing you can say will make any difference. If you don't mind that, I don't mind listening.

There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man's rational faculty—the power of ideas.

Live, love, laugh, leave a legacy.

A tendency that's run through your family for generations can stop with you. You're a transition person — a link between past and future. And your own change can affect many, many lives downstream.