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Powerful Quotes

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Powerful Quotes

“any criticism heard secondhand sounds worse than it would face to face. Words spoken out of our presence strike us as more powerful, just as people we know only by reputation seem larger than life.”

PeopleKnowsSeemsFacesSoundPowerfulHeardCriticismStrikesReputationFace To FaceLarger Than Life
Book:That's not what I meant!: how conversational style makes or breaks your relations with others
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“There are good people who are dealt a bad hand by fate, and bad people who live long, comfortable, privileged lives. A small twist of fate can save or end a life; random chance is a permanent, powerful player in each of our lives, and in human history as well.”

PeopleHumansWellsLongEndsHandsChancePowerfulOur LivesFatePlayerComfortablePermanentGood PeoplePrivilegedTwistsHuman HistoryChances AreBad PeopleTwist Of FateRandom ChancePrivileged Life
Author:Jeff Greenfield
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“Nothing has given me more hope recently than to observe how simple conversations give birth to actions that can change lives and restore our faith in the future. There is no more powerful way to initiate significant social change than to start a conversation. When a group of people discover that they share a common concern, that's when the process of change begins.”

PeopleWayGivingActionGivenSocialProcessSimplePowerfulCommonGroupsShareBirthConversationConcernSignificantLife ChangingSocial ChangeInitiateProcess Of Change
Author:Margaret J. Wheatley
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“Our status as a land of equal opportunity has made us a rich and powerful nation, but it has also transformed lives. It has given people like me the chance to grow up knowing that no dream was too big and no goal out of reach.”

PeopleMadeDreamBigsOpportunityGivenNationsGrowsGoalChancePowerfulPovertyGrowing UpKnowingRichLandEqualLike MeTransformedEqual Opportunity
Book:American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone
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“To whom one reports is a unit of measure. It measures the exact distance between the player and the center of power. It is the closest we can get to a calibrated answer to the question 'How big am I?' More than the size of an executive's office or even his title, which no one remembers anyway, the fewer people between the player and a 'yes,' the more powerful he is.”

PeopleBigsRememberAnswersPowerfulPowerPlayerOfficeHollywoodDistanceSizeTitlesReportsExecutivesFewerClosestUnits
Author:Lynda Obst
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“True power is invisible and impeccable, like good taste. It is never clumsy or artless. Powerful people whisper, suggest, seduce, in order to coerce. They only use volume for effect. This is how you can tell a blowhard from a mogul. ... Most powerful people don't need to coerce; their mere presence is coercive.”

PeopleNeedsUseOrderPowerfulPowerEffectsTasteMereInvisibleMost PowerfulVolumeGood TasteSeducingClumsyImpeccableTrue PowerCoerceMogulsBlowhards
Author:Lynda Obst
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“Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a culture shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.”

PeopleWorldUseBigsAmericaCulturePowerfulOpinionIndiaImpactIntuitionIntellectIndianShockComing BackVery PowerfulCountrysideBig ImpactCulture Shock
Author:Steve Jobs
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“I'm not surprised that people are unsettled because of war. The enemy has got a powerful tool, and that is to get on your TV screen by killing innocent people. And my job is to continue to remind the people it's worth it, we're not going to retreat hastily, and we're not going to pull out of there before the job is done. And we have got a plan for victory.”

PeopleWarDoneJobsPowerfulEnemyPlansTvsVictoryToolsKillingScreensInnocentWorth ItRetreat
Author:George W. Bush
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“The culture of the United States has flooded the world. It's the inevitable result of a powerful culture, art. We've got an instinctive touch when it comes to the popular mind because we've had no aristocracy. It is a democratic country. And we know without knowing it, without bothering to understand it, how to reach ordinary people, sometimes with the most vulgar, worthless junk on the face of the earth, but we know how to do it [laughter].”

PeopleKnowsWorldMindArtCountrySometimesStatesEarthFacesCultureUnitedResultsPowerfulUnited StatesKnow HowKnowingLaughterOrdinaryDemocraticInevitableBotherWorthlessVulgarOrdinary PeopleJunkAristocracyDemocratic Country
Author:Arthur Miller
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“If you're not careful people will judge you based on these appearances and they will pigeon hole you that this is the person that you are. Your shy, your aggressive, your this type or that type and you lose the control of the dynamic, they become the ones that determine who you are. A powerful person never loses control of the dynamic they are in someway in control.”

PeopleIfsPersonsLosesPowerfulJudgingTypeWho You AreDetermineCarefulAppearanceHolesShyAggressivePigeonsPowerful Person
Author:Robert Greene
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“I don't believe in a perfect world. I don't believe it's achievable, and I believe the people who try to achieve it usually end up turning it into something like Cambodia or something very similar because purity tests set in. Are you ideologically pure enough to be allowed to live? Well, it turns out that very few people are, so you end up with a big powerful struggle and a mass killing scene.”

PeopleWorldTryingBelieveWellsEndsEnoughBigsTurnsI BelievePerfectPowerfulStruggleAchieveScenePureMassTestsKillingDon't BelievePurityLive WellA Perfect WorldCambodia
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“So often with beginning writers, the story that they want to start with is the most important story of their life - my molestation, my this, my horrible drug addiction - they want to tell that most important story, and they don't have the skills to tell it yet, so it ends up becoming a comedy. A powerful story told poorly becomes funny, it just makes people laugh behind their hands.”

PeopleWantImportantEndsStoriesHandsPowerfulBehindsLaughingComedyBecomingDrugSkillsAddictionHorribleMaking People LaughDrug AddictionDrug AddictMolestationBeginning Writers
Author:Chuck Palahniuk
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“Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends.”

PeopleMenTryingKindMeanEndsFactsUseFormPowerfulMistakeDemocracyTestsSlaveNotionWideDemocracies HaveImportsSyllablesBe A SlaveTry Me
Author:James Vila Blake
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“Never hesitate to show your own staff that you need help. They need to be reminded how important they are to the process. In life and in business, we rely on each other to be responsible for individual tasks that benefit everyone. People sometimes forget how much interdependence there really is in a successful business. Learn the art of asking for help to empower and motivate others, and you will have learned a very powerful management strategy.”

PeopleNeedsArtImportantSometimesHelpingShowsIndividualProcessForgetPowerfulSuccessfulBenefitsTasksAskingResponsibleManagementStrategyRelyEmpoweringStaffVery PowerfulBeing ResponsibleInterdependenceSuccessful BusinessNeed HelpAsking For Help
Author:Georgette Mosbacher
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“Sitting for a picture is morbid business. A portrait doesn't begin to mean anything until the subject is dead. This is the whole point. We're doing this to create a kind of sentimental past for people in decades to come. It's their past, their history we're inventing here. And it's not how I look now that matters. It's how I'll look in twenty-five years as clothing and faces change, as photographs change. The deeper I pass into death, the more powerful my picture becomes. Isn't this why picture-taking is so ceremonial? It's like a wake. And I'm the actor made up for the laying-out.”

PeopleYearsLooksKindMeanMadeMatterWholePastFacesActorsPowerfulFiveSubjectsSittingTwentiesPhotographDeeperDecadesFive YearsClothingsPortraitsSentimentalInventingTwenty FiveMorbidPicture Taking
Book:Mao II
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“American culture in particular has instilled in us the bizarre notion that to ask for help amounts to an admission of failure. But some of the most powerful, successful, admired people in the world seem, to me, to have something in common: they ask constantly, creatively, compassionately, and gracefully. And to be sure: when you ask, there's always the possibility of a no on the other side of the request. If we don't allow for that no, we're not actually asking, we're either begging or demanding. But it is the fear of the no that keeps so many of our mouths sewn tightly shut.”

PeopleIfsWorldHelpingSeemsCultureAsksSidesPowerfulCommonSuccessfulPossibilityParticularAmountMouthsAskingNotionMost PowerfulBizarreAmerican CultureRequestBeggingAdmission
Author:Amanda Palmer
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“I know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.”

PeopleIfsKnowsForceGoalPowerfulMankindMovementMessagesLaborDemocraticPopulationPursuitSectionsSecured
Book:Paul Robeson speaks: writings, speeches, interviews, 1918-1974
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“Some sort of belief in all-powerful supernatural beings is common, if not universal. A tendency to obey authority, perhaps especially in children, a tendency to believe what you're told, a tendency to fear your own death, a tendency to wish to see your loved ones who have died, to wish to see them again, a wish to understand where you came from, where the world came from, all these psychological predispositions, under the right cultural conditions, tend to lead to people believing in things for which there is no evidence.”

PeopleIfsWorldBelieveChildrenBeliefWishPowerfulCommonConditionsAuthorityEvidenceUniversalDiedTendenciesPsychologicalLoved OnesSupernatural Beings
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Religion has been a powerful weapon in the hands of governments, in the hands of priests, in the hands of kings who have used it as a weapon to keep down the populace. It is a wonderful way of disciplining people and making them do what you want, to tell them that if they don't do what you want they will, for example, go to Hell.”

PeopleIfsWayWantHas BeensHandsGovernmentUsedPowerfulHellWonderfulExampleKingsWeaponsWhat You WantPriestsGo To HellPowerful Weapons
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Radical militant feminist believes that women of color and Black women in particular have written the cutting edge theory and really were the individuals who exploded feminist theory into the directions that has made it more powerful. So I see us as the leaders not just of Black people and Black women in terms of feminism but in terms of the movement as a whole.”

PeopleBelieveMadeWholeIndividualBlackTermPowerfulLeaderCuttingWrittenFeminismMovementParticularColorTheoryEdgesFeministMade ItRadicalBlack PeopleBlack WomenMilitantCutting EdgeFeminist Theory
Author:Bell Hooks
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“Men ruled the roost and women played a subservient role [in the 1960s]. Working wives were a rarity, because their place was in the home, bringing up the kids. The women who did work were treated as second-class citizens because it was a male-dominated society. That was a fact of life then. But it wouldn't be tolerated today, and that's quite right in my book... people look back on those days through a thick veil of nostalgia, but life was hard if you were anything other than a rich, powerful, white male.”

PeopleIfsMenLooksBookHardFactsHomeKidsTodayWhitePowerfulClassRolesRichWifeCitizensMalesNostalgiaTreatedThickVeils1960sFacts Of LifeSubservientRaritySecond Class CitizensRoost
Author:Jon Hamm
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“Similar (of course, far from identical) irritations in similar conditions call out similar reflexes; the more powerful the irritation, the sooner it overcomes personal peculiarities. To a tickle, people react differently, but to a red-hot iron, alike. As a steam-hammer converts a sphere and a cube alike into sheet metal, so under the blow of too great and inexorable events resistances are smashed and the boundaries of "individuality" lost.”

PeopleCoursesLostPowerfulConditionsEventsRedOvercomingHotIndividualityBlowBoundariesResistanceIronSpheresMetalsSheetsHammersIdenticalSteamIrritationReflexesCubesInexorableRed Hot
Book:History of the Russian Revolution
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“I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.”

PeopleThinkingDreamInterestingPowerfulSuccessfulBusyEngagedSuccessful PeopleReally InterestingReally HappyHappy People
Book:Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person
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“For today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!”

PeopleFirstsMayTodayEarthCausesFearPowerfulEnemyInformationPureWeaponsFirst TimeGardenArmyWorkersConfusionSecureCelebrateIdeologyGloriousResolveConfusingContradictoryPurificationUnificationPests
Author:Napoleon Bonaparte
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“In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future. From this day forward, the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and every rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty. In this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war.”

PeopleWayWarCountryAmericaSpiritualNationsReligiousPowerfulCitiesMillionsForeverWeaponsResourcesTownsScaryOur CountryMost PowerfulThis DayVillageHeritageDedicationAlmightyTranscendenceReligious FaithPledge Of AllegianceOne Nation Under GodCities And Towns
Author:Dwight D. Eisenhower
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