Live Above The Influence Quotes & Sayings

The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert.
Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last.
Even the sun goes down. — Guy Gavriel Kay

Nature's action is complex: and nothing is gained in the long run by pretending that it is simple, and trying to describe it in a series of elementary propositions. — Alfred Marshall

Sensing my delight at seeing his laptop, Tom asked me, "William, have you ever seen the Internet?"
"No."
In a quiet conference room, Tom sat me down at his computer and explained the track pad, how the motion of my fingers guided the arrow on the screen.
"This is Google," he said. "You can find answers to anything. What do you want to search for?"
"Windmill."
In one second, he'd pulled up five million page results-pictures and models of windmills I'd never even imagined. — William Kamkwamba

The secular world is the world of history as made by human beings. Human agency is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence, and judge. Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. But for that kind of wider perception we need time and patient and skeptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction. — Edward W. Said

In April, I asked my staff to determine if Senate rules and relevant laws would allow me to direct the trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock. In May, my staff worked with outside counsel and with the Senate ethics committee staff to draft a written communication to the trustees. After obtaining pre-approval by mid-June from the Senate ethics committee, I issued a letter directing my trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock in my family's trust. — Bill Frist

Be ready. Be seated. See what courage sounds like. See how brave it is to reveal yourself in this way. But above all, see what it is to still live, to profoundly influence the lives of others after you are gone, by your words. — Abraham Verghese

It is a queer weapon, a shotgun. Every effort to secure additional range is well paid for. A bird may be going away at tremendous speed, "burning the air" as a youngster would put it. Seemingly nothing but chain-lightning, which zig-zagged a bit, could stop him. A crack of the gun and that wild flier is dead in the air, a full forty yards away. Right then the conviction comes to us that man never made another weapon so deadly as the shotgun. However, go back another forty yards, set the bird up on the limb of a tree and you might shoot at him all day and not kill him. The shotgun is a deadly weapon but its range is strictly limited and we are ourselves pretty well convinced that nothing less than a two-inch cannon will regularly kill single game-birds at one-hundred yards, with any kind of shot that can be put in the gun. — Charles Askins

I've always rebelled a little when people say, 'My Jewish values lead me to really care about the poor.' I know some Christians who care about the poor, too. — William Kristol

When you do interviews, you have to talk about yourself - and I like to find out about other people. I am so familiar with everything that I do. I've said it over and over again. I think it is boring. — Johnny Mathis

In terms of comedy, there was a Seinfeldian era of comedy that I love but got played out. Seinfeld was great, but then after him it was people acting like Seinfeld and making observations that we felt like we'd kind of heard before, and then you're seeing Seinfeldian comedy in commercials. Suddenly everything is observational funniness. — Mike Birbiglia