Loss of Influence Quotes

It is evident that the Church is always abandoning more the old traditional structures of European life and, therefore, is changing its appearance and living new forms in itself. It's clear most of all that the de-Christianization of Europe is progressing, that the Christian element is always vanishing more from the fabric of society.

Nothing is as sad as seeing a person who used to have power have none.

Pay no heed to those who tell you that they have relinquished place and power of their own accord, and from their love of quiet. For almost always they have been brought to this retirement by their insufficiency and against their will.

As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.

Once your network has lost confidence in you, you're headed for the dustbin of history.

People who have had power, when they become powerless, are really tragic.... We just allow ourselves to be conditioned by a society so we become as important as we're supposed to be.

They will leave the King nothing other than the empty name of King, no more

The belief in American exceptionalism has vanished with the end of empire, the weakening of power, the loss of faith in America’s future.

No one can fail to see that the power of the Church among large numbers in many communities is today diminishing, or has already ceased.

The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.

The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.

There is one good thing about no longer being President. You can make your own notes and say what you want. Of course no one cares any more what you say.

There are always signs that a reign is ending, and they are usually spotted not in the king himself but in his court. In the inner circle, latent jealousies between advisers spill into open conflict, as they angrily debate who is to blame for the calamity, chewing over each other's past errors and pointing the finger at old and nascent enemies.

You lose power in Britain and you are just Joe Public again.

Many very respectable Characters & Friends to old England are ruined, and are sure to meet no Mercy from Congress.

...to many a mother's heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when even before that time, in school, or where he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, trade and economics and politics make their imprint even while his lips are dewy with his mother's kiss.