The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
E. M. Forster

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.
E. M. Forster

It is difficult to imagine how any behavior in the presence of another person can avoid being a communication of one's own view of the nature of one's relationship with that person and how it can fail to influence that person.
Paul Watzlawick

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.
Robert Anton Wilson

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.
Jackson Browne

I think maybe the rural influence in my life helped me in a sense, of knowing how to get close to people and talk to them and get my work done.
Gordon Parks

But the Committee for Industrial Organizations is here. It is now henceforth a definite instrumentality, destined greatly to influence the lives of our people and the internal and external course of the republic.
John L. Lewis

But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
Joseph Heller

The only real influence I've ever had was myself.
Edward Hopper

The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.
Katherine Dunham

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.
Michael Caine

There is no influence like the influence of habit.
Gilbert Parker

I went through a big Alice Cooper phase, which was probably a major influence on my writing style later, especially after Plastic Surgery Disasters.
Jello Biafra

Every soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture, and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole.
Bernard Law Montgomery

Discipline strengthens the mind so that it becomes impervious to the corroding influence of fear.
Bernard Law Montgomery

I really do believe in the influence of your surroundings.
Matt Sharp

Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone else's hands.
Rem Koolhaas

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Henry Adams

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.
Ludwig von Mises

And, well of course, Count Basie, and I think all of the black bands of the late thirties and early forties, bands with real players. They had an influence on everybody, not just drummers.
Buddy Rich