Unintentional Influence Quotes

Which are the people who have influenced us most? Not the ones who thought they did, but those who had not the remotest notion that they were influencing us. In the Christian life, the implicit is never conscious, if it is conscious it ceases to have this unaffected loveliness which is the characteristic of the touch of Jesus. We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.

Whatever my aims and agendas were, I never asked for power.

The footsteps a child follows are most likely to be the ones his parents thought they covered up.

Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair-all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we but quote from them. What would remain to me if this art of appropriation were derogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand things; wise and foolish have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts, faculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature. It bears the name of Goethe.

[Ted Denson] is sort of a reluctant leader. He didn't try to flex his influence. He's just eminently followable.

We touch other people's lives simply by existing.

No writer or teacher or artist can escape the responsibility of influencing others whether he intends to or not, whether he is conscious of it or not.

Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.

Everyone becomes a part of history whether they like it or not and whether they know it or not.

I think those who have impact and influence over us are often unaware.

I steal into their dreams," he said. "I steal into their most shameful thoughts, I'm in every shiver, every spasm of their souls, I steal into their hearts, I scrutinize their most fundamental beliefs, I scan their irrational impulses, their unspeakable emotions, I sleep in their lungs during the summer and their muscles during the winter, and all of this I do without the least effort, without intending to, without asking or seeking it out, without constraints, driven only by love and devotion.

Even in writing an annual report, the unconscious plays a role.

It's easy to become a satellite today without even being aware of it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power; the power of the dollar.

I must admit, I don't try to put my stamp on anything; it just happens. I don't really know how to think another way.

That which we are, we are all the while teaching, not voluntarily, but involuntarily.

Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all.

Only lately, like within the last few years, have I had people actually do an impression of me to me, which weirds me out to think of what they have picked up on, without ever realizing it myself.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too ful of life and love. They can't help it. Poeple come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter.

I'm usually the last to see my influence in other people's work. People give me stuff and say "Oh look, this guy's ripping you off," and I'm like "What do you mean?" Often I see the people that I've ripped off filtered into my own work. In other people's work, I can only see specific, tiny little instances of inflections stolen from another artist.

I don't think of my opponents in the sense that I don't think of them consciously, I don't steer it one way or the other.

Sometimes I just get attention, and I really don't know how it happens.