Influence Quotes - Page 15

• Just listening carefully to what the musicians are really doing, putting the music in the right time... I became aware of the degree to which time, and therefore duration, was important in music and in art. It had a direct influence on my painting.

  Guido Molinari

  Music, Art, Listening

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• I don't feel any real animosity towards critics when they write negative things. I think some are more perceptive than others. Some are very knowledgeable about painting. But it isn't something I have any influence over, so there isn't any point in worrying about it.

  Peter Doig

  Real, Writing, Thinking

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• My job the same as carpenter. What kind of house you want to build? What kind of food you want to make? You think your ingredients, your structure. Simple. [Other] Japanese restaurants … mix in some other style of food and call it influence, right? I don't like that. … In Japanese sushi restaurants, a lot of sushi chefs talk too much. 'This fish from there,' 'This very expensive.' Same thing, start singing. And a lot have that fish case in front of them, cannot see what chef do. I'm not going to hide anything, right?

  Masa Takayama

  Jobs, Simple, Thinking

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• I'm against very wealthy ­people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it's doable I'm going to do it.

  Sheldon Adelson

  Long, People, Election

  "Billionaire Sheldon Adelson Says He Might Give $100M To Newt Gingrich Or Other Republican". Interview with Steven Bertoni, www.forbes.com. February 21, 2012.

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• The Book of the Heart provides a fresh perspective on the influence of the book as artifact on our language and culture. Reading this book broadens our appreciation of the relationship between things and ideas.

  Henry Petroski

  Appreciation, Book, Reading

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• The purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity.

  George Eliot

  Honesty, Attitude, Spring

  George Eliot (1863). “Romola”, p.112

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• Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower.

  George Eliot

  Love, Flower, Blessed

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3798, Delphi Classics

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• In order to have a large number of values in common, all the members of the group must have an equable opportunity, to receive and to take from others. There must be a large variety of shared undertakings and experiences. Otherwise, the influences which educate some into masters, educates others into slaves.

  John Dewey

  Opportunity, Order, Numbers

  "Democracy and Education". Book by John Dewey, 1916.

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• Persuasion is effected through the medium of the hearers, when they shall have been brought to a state of excitement under the influence of speech; for we do not, when influenced by pain or joy, or partiality or dislike, award our decisions in the same way; about which means of persuasion alone, I declare that the system-mongers of the present day busy themselves.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Mean, Awards

  Aristotle (1857). “Treatise on Rhetoric: Literally Translated from the Greek”, p.12

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• Plato says a multitude can never philosophize and hence can never recognize the seriousness of philosophy or who really philosophizes. Attempting to influence the multitude results in forced prostitution.

  Allan Bloom

  Plato, Philosophy, Results

  "Giants and Dwarfs". Book by Allan Bloom. Chapter: "Commerce and Culture," p. 286, 1990.

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• All "if" statements about the past are as dubious as prophecies of the future are. It seems fairly plausible that if Alexander or Ghengis Khan had never been born, some other individual would have filled his place and executed the design of the Hellenic or Mongolic expansion; but the Alexanders of philosophy and religion, of science and art, seem less expendable; their impact seems less determined by economic challenges and social pressures; and they seem to have a much wider range of possibilities to influence the direction, shape and texture of civilizations.

  Arthur Koestler

  Art, Philosophy, Past

  "The Sleepwalkeers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe". Book by Arthur Koestler, 1959.

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• Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child's life - the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you'll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

  Jeff Greenfield

  Children, Powerful, Father

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• The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Numbers, Free Will, Worthy

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamic action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects, whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially, or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by "semiosis" I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Mean, Two, Important

  "Pragmatism (1907)". "The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings". Book edited by the Peirce Edition Project, Volume 2, p. 411, 1998.

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• The most powerful influence exercised by the Arabs on general natural physics was that directed to the advances of chemistry ; a science for which this race created a new era.(...) Besides making laudatory mention of that which we owe to the natural science of the Arabs in both the terrestrial and celestial spheres, we must likewise allude to their contributions in separate paths of intellectual development to the general mass of mathematical science.

  Alexander von Humboldt

  Powerful, Race, Intellectual

  "Cosmos". Book by H.G. Bohn, v2, p. 589,595, 1860.

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• Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work. That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.

  Barack Obama

  Hurt, Brother, Fall

  Democratic National Convention Presidential Nomination Acceptance, delivered 28 August 2008, INVESCO Field at Mile High Stadium, Denver, Colorado

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• Indeed the influence of music on the development of religion is a subject which would repay a sympathetic study.

  James G. Frazer

  Development, Study, Sympathetic

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  School, Artist, Mad

  "The Allowable Rhyme". Book by H. P. Lovecraft, 1915.

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• I have come to use the pan-Celtic history, which spans from 500 BC to the present, as a creative springboard. The music I am creating is a result of traveling down that road and picking up all manner of themes and influences, which may or may not be overtly Celtic in nature.

  Loreena McKennitt

  Creating, Creative, Use

  Website notes to "The Mask And Mirror" on official site, loreenamckennitt.com.

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• One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.

  Andre Maurois

  Children, Character, Littles

  "The Art of Living". Book by Andre Maurois, 1939.

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• I discovered, to my amazement, that all through history there had been resistance ... and bitter, exaggerated, last-stitch resistance ... to every significant technological change that had taken place on earth. Usually the resistance came from those groups who stood to lose influence, status, money...as a result of the change. Although they never advanced this as their reason for resisting it. It was always the good of humanity that rested upon their hearts.

  Isaac Asimov

  Taken, Heart, Technological Change

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• Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history : the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal "honor" and court etiquette.

  Isaac Asimov

  Names, Two, Honor

  Isaac Asimov (1991). “Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

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• I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair."

  Kenneth Tynan

  Indulge In, Luxury, Despair

  "Conference at Edinburgh (1963)". "Tynan Right and Left: Plays, Films, People, Places and Events". Book by Kenneth Tynan, p. 146, 1967.

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• It is certainly true that whatever a man may do or say, the most significant thing about him is what he thinks; and significant also is how he came to think it, why he continued to think it, or, if he did not continue, what the influences were which caused him to change his mind.

  Albert J. Nock

  Men, Thinking, Significant Things

  "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man". Book by Albert J. Nock, 1943.

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• Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections. Let these influencing powers actuate, by the permission or disposal of Providence, from selfish or social views, yet in time the mysterious will of Heaven is unfolded, and we behold our conduct, from whatever motives excited, operating to answer the important designs of heaven.

  Daniel Boone

  Powerful, Selfish, Men

  "The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke". Book by John Filson, the opening lines of "The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon; containing a Narrative of the Wars of Kentucke", 1784.

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