Formative Influence Quotes

War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there.

When I was in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, Green Day was my formative entry to punk. I wish I could say I was listening to Minor Threat and Black Flag, but I wasn't. Bay Area punk bands were doing it right.

Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.

When I think of Paisley, I think of everything that has shaped my life.

I read a lot of the 'Pern books' growing up - basically up through 'All the Weyrs of Pern,' maybe a couple after that. As far as formative dragon influences are concerned, she's probably one of the top ones; I know I read other fantasy novels that had them, but none particularly stick in mind.

How I was raised is what I am today.

There was no known cure for a Catholic education.

While my father was a diplomat rather than a business person, I count him as a critically important formative role model. He was comfortable living and working all around the world, wherever he was assigned.

Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator.

Each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of "form" to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.

I was raised by a formidable woman. She always pushed me to be competitive in a man's world. That's maybe one of the attractions to journalism in the beginning. It was a male profession, and I was comfortable in that.

The faith I was born into formed me.

I grew up a poor kid in Florida, and I was always in Florida living with my stepfather and my mother, and we used to, every year, sit down and watch 'The Wizard of Oz.' And I think to this day that's probably the foundation for everything I've done since.

I perceive and relate to the world through where I grew up; that's part of me. It's what I judge everything else against.

As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character.

Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

I think anything that happens to you between the ages of zero to 18, and probably further on, has a lasting impact on you.

When I was 14 or 15, our teacher introduced us to Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities.' It was just for entertainment - we read it aloud - and all of a sudden it became a treasure.

The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould a child's character.

I think everything that happens to you becomes a part of what you end up doing and being and standing for.

The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.

I was a dancer, growing up, and I definitely thought that was going to be my profession.

My headmaster chastised me with a diabolical instrument a leather strap tacked to a piece of wood but he taught me with such villainous success that I am now Prime Minister.

In every remodelling of the present, the existing condition of things must be supplanted by a new one. Now every variety of circumstances in which men find themselves, every object which surrounds them, communicates a definite form and impress to their internal nature. This form is not such that it can change and adapt itself to any other a man may choose to receive; and the end is foiled, while the power is destroyed, when we attempt to impose upon that which is already stamped in the soul a form which disagrees with it.

Playing with Angus and Malcolm, that's a pretty tough gig, mate. That made me the maniac that I am today, no doubt.