Books Influence Quotes

Tacitus did not write a most dangerous book. His readers made it so. ~ Christopher B. Krebs

Robert Cialdini, author of one of my favorite books, Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion, writes: "A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they ~ Lior Suchard

Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on ... ~ Matthew Pearl

The books that influence the world are those that it has not read. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Thank God for books, for validating your feelings, and letting you know you're not alone. ~ Paula Gruben

In 2009 i was nominated for the 'best dutch poetry debute' called 'the buddingh award'. It's supposed to be the most important debut price. However the event proved rather hallucinogenic. It started with my publisher expressing 'great surprise' that 'I still managed to get nominated'. The surprise was out of place, since my book simply got the best reviews of all books that year. I went to Poetry International and noticed only 2 of the 3 jury members where present, and the female one kept looking at me in sort of a guilty fashion. Then the award was granted to Misscha Andriessen, which was sort of weird since his book was not seen as universally the best by critics. 'Too lightweight' one review of an important critic read. Later on I read that jurymember Wim Brands one year prior to the price already made clear that 'he is a big fan of Mischa Andriessen'. I always assumed that they were friends somehow but this morning I solved the mystery: they are from the same little village, so it had nothing to do with poetry, just tribal culture at its best. Kind of a relief to know that. ~ Martijn Benders

Yet it would be nearly impossible to overstate Lyell's influence. The Principles of Geology went through twelve editions in his lifetime and contained notions that shaped geological thinking far into the twentieth century. Darwin took a first edition with him on the Beagle voyage and wrote afterwards that 'the great merit of the Principles was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind, and therefore that, when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes22.' In short, he thought him nearly a god, as did many of his generation. It is a testament to the strength of Lyell's sway that in the 1980s, when geologists had to abandon just a part of his theory to accommodate the impact theory of extinctions, it nearly killed them. But that is another chapter. ~ Bill Bryson

Evidentialism, the view that holds that a belief is rationally justified or acceptable only if it is held on the basis of good evidence, has been rejected by many in the field of epistemology, in which such questions are probed deeply, and this rejection is for good reasons. The fact is that for all our talk about evidence, most of us would have a difficult time producing evidence for many of the things we believe and take for granted. We have neither the time nor the resources to track down such evidence, so we simply accept most of our beliefs on the word of others or because we heard them in news reports or documentaries, read them in books, or received them from other sources of information. Are we acting irrationally for holding beliefs in this way? It hardly seems so. ~ Paul Chamberlain

She is a real bookworm. I think she lives on print. Her whole house is full of books - looks as if she likes them better than human company. ~ Cornelia Funke

Sometimes you only get one chance to rewrite the qualities of the character you played in a person's life story. Always take it. Never let the world read the wrong version of you. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Her parents didn't understand that braille meant big clunky books that marked you as different, while audiobooks live invisibly on your phone and text-to-speech gave you the whole damn internet. ~ Scott Westerfeld

God forbid that I should ever be a good influence on anybody. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Real men read my books. ~ Wilbur Smith

Every time that you read a book that is worth anything, the author has put everything they know into that book; so when you read that book, you eat their life. You kind of go up a level; so if you read 50 books, you've lived 50 lifetimes.
CBC interview Q with Jian Gomeshi Sept.23, 2014 ~ Caitlin Moran

I haven't got time to read books.'
'What do you mean you haven't got time? What are yo
u doing?'
'Lots of things: studying French, writing a diary,
and ...'
'And what?'
She was about to say 'waiting for the phone to ring
', but she thought it best to say nothing.
'My dear, you're still very young, you've got your
whole life ahead of you. Read. Forget
everything you've been told about books and just re
ad.'
'I've read loads of books. ~ Paulo Coelho

Within the pages of books, I've journeyed to Mandalay, the Milky Way and Santa Fe. ~ Kevin Ansbro

Strong communicators increase their influence because they are intentional and focused with their language. ~ Dianna Booher

Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form. ~ Stendhal

Reviewing a book written by someone you're living with and sleeping with is, needless to say, wrong. ~ Jill Lepore

But mostly she likes the fact that there's a reason for every death, and only one murderer at a time, and things get figured out at the end, and the murderer always gets caught. ~ Margaret Atwood

They was a guy paroled," he said. "'Bout a month he's back for breakin' parole. A guy ast him why he bust his parole. 'Well, hell,' he says. 'They got no conveniences at my old man's place. Got no 'lectric lights, got no shower baths. There ain't no books, an' the food's lousy.' Says he come back where they got a few conveniences an' he eats regular. He says it makes him feel lonesome out there in the open havin' to think what to do next. So he stole a car an' come back. ~ John Steinbeck

Here lies the secret. Says Patanjali, the father of Yoga, "When a man rejects all the superhuman powers, then he attains to the cloud of virtue." He sees God. He becomes God and helps others to become the same. This is all I have to preach. Doctrines have been expounded enough. There are books by the million. Oh, for an ounce of practice! ~ Swami Vivekananda

Life got in the way
two years in the army, work, marriage, family responsibilities, the need to earn more and more money, all the muck that bogs us down when we don't have the balls to stand up for ourselves
but I had never lost my interest in books. ~ Paul Auster

Readers read more into books than writers write into them. ~ Melvyn Small

She wanted to read things -- could not resist wanting to read things -- and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, that she should receive any praise for such reflexive habits baffled the girl, for she knew herself to be fantastically stupid about many things. Wasn't it possible that what others mistook as intelligence might in fact be only a sort of mutation of the will? She could sit in one place longer than other children be bored for hours without complaint, and was completely devoted to filling in every last corner of the coloring books Augustus Blake sometimes brought home. She could not help her mutated will -- no more than she could help the shape of her feet or the street on which she was born. She was unable to glean real satisfaction from accidents. In the child's mind a breach now appeared: between what she believed she knew of herself, essentially, and her essence as others seemed to understand it. She began to exist for other people, and if ever asked a question to which she did not know the answer she was wont to fold her arms across her body and look upward. As if the question itself were to obvious to truly concern her. ~ Zadie Smith

I don't see love as some perfect happily ever after thing like it is in books and movies. It's more like a bumpy road filled with potholes ... and detours. Sometimes we even veer off into the ditch. But the places that road will take you, the things you'll experience, are worth all of the uncertainty. ~ Melissa Brown

One reads to leave home, to go on a journey. ~ Marty Rubin

I lost Ike,' Aunt Josephine said, 'and I lost Lake Lachrymose. I mean, I didn't really lose it, of course. It's still down in the valley. But I grew up on its shores. I used to swim in it every day. I know which beaches were sandy and which were rocky. I knew all the islands in the middle of its waters and all the caves alongside it's shore. Lake Lachrymose felt like a friend to me. But when it took poor Ike away from me I was too afraid to go near it anymore. I stopped swimming in it. I never went to the beach again. I even put away all my books about it. The only way I can bear to look at it is from the Wide Window in the Library. ~ Lemony Snicket

If you don't remember childhood and you idealize it, you can't write books for kids because they're not real. Kids pick that up. ~ Robert Munsch

I don't really collect the mementos. I do steal books off of sets. If there's a library on the set, you can bet that I'll steal away with a book or two. ~ Billy Campbell

In the late 1970s, the controversial "Iroquois influence theory" posits that the Longhouse People's divinely given Great Law of Peace so inspired Franklin and others among the founding fathers that it served as the model for the Articles of Confederation, the governing document of the United States for the first decade of its existence, and the precursor of the Constitution ratified in 1787. ~ Peter Manseau

I was always a big fan of the books and over the years I've become quite attached to Ron and we've meshed into the same person, really. ~ Rupert Grint

Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the DOCTRINE ITSELF, not the MAN. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle. ~ Thomas Paine

Stories survive not just because of empathetic characters that we can still identify with but because the author has something to say to us and they have the ability to communicate that to the reader in a clear and often amusing way. Jane Austen knows how to hook a reader with her endearing and often infuriating characters but she also keeps us hooked by her wit, her observations, and her unique use of language. Lots of other writers had books published at the same time as Jane Austen and yet they've been lost to us. Austen has survived because she has a unique voice. But the themes she explores are also important. ~ Victoria Connelly

When I was a kid, I lived in this small town way out in the country. We had three TV channels and one radio station. I couldn't even get my hands on good comic books. My aunt, who is a librarian, gave me Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie," and Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia." They were such incredible treasures to have in my somewhat mundane country life. ~ Nick Offerman

I know I've erred in the past putting too much of my social justice sentiments in comics, but hopefully not too much, and I tried to only do that with characters that it made sense with it. These days, with the 'social justice' aspects of the two books I write, 'Catwoman' and 'Katana,' the concerns are more about moral justice. ~ Ann Nocenti

There probably are, but you would need a thaumaturge for that.
They have books upon books of old magic. We only have Google. ~ Victoria Escobar

Colonel L., in whose eyes I was a first-rate Riot Acter or, worse, an intellectual - in his phrase, "someone who reads books" - the most damning appraisal that could be made of a junior lieutenant. ~ Steven Pressfield

The very essence of all power to influence lies in getting the other person to participate. Influence is an invitation anyone can make to another person. ~ John C. Maxwell

Every time you rip the bandages off, you just open the wound up again. Every time he sees you, it's like tearing off the bandages. ~ Cassandra Clare

There is nothing like books - of all things sold incomparably the cheapest, of all pleasure the least palling, they take up little room, keep quiet when they are not wanted, and, when taken up, bring us face to face with the choicest men who ever lived, at their choicest moments. ~ Samuel Palmer

Some books are not read in the right way because they have skipped a stage of opinion, assume a crystallization of information in society which has not yet taken place. ~ Doris Lessing

If you think you have it tough, read history books. ~ Bill Maher

It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The death of literature had been exaggerated. Whereas on dating websites, those who like books are usually bracketed into a single category, the broad selections on offer at WH Smith spoke to the diversity of individuals' motives for reading. If there was a conclusion to be drawn from the number of bloodstained covers, however, it was that there was a powerful desire, in a wide cross-section of airline passengers, to be terrified. ~ Alain De Botton

True influence over another comes not from a moments eloquence nor from any happily chosen word, but from the accumulation of a lifetime's thoughts stored up in the eyes ... the secret smile in the eyes of a friend ~ Thornton Wilder

He shouldn't have trespassed!"
The voice sounded petulant. Not diabolical.
It gave Belle hope, how human it seemed. In all of her fairy tales and adventure books- the ones with the heroes who were clever rather than strong- this was how you outwitted an opponent. By finding a chink in his armor, a personality flaw to exploit. Then you got him to show off his power by turning into a tiny (and easily stompable) mouse, or slitting open his own stomach.
All she needed was a flaw, and time. ~ Liz Braswell

There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world. ~ Henry Fielding

It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! ... Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Self-Help Books of the Twentieth Century: Exploiting Hope and Fear," and ~ Margaret Atwood

The higher education so much needed today is not given in the school, is not to be bought in the market place, but it has to be wrought out in each one of us for himself; it is the silent influence of character on character. ~ William Osler

I can't stand Anne Tyler books, but I gobble them up. It's like Updike - I can't stand him either, but I read everything he writes. ~ Caroline Thompson

I read used books because fingerprint-smudged and dog-eared pages are heavier on the eye. Because every book can belong to many lives. Books should be kept in public places and step out with passersby who'll onto them for a spell. Books should die like people, consumed by aches and pains, infected, drowning off a bridge together with the suicides, poked into a potbellied stove, torn apart by children to make paper boats. They should die of anything, in other words, except boredom, as private property condemned to a life sentence on a shelf. ~ Erri De Luca