External Influences Quotes

Our health is our sound relation to external objects; our sympathy with external being.

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.

Most blacks are happy, except those who have had other ideas pushed into their ears.

No matter how great a man is, the size of his funeral usually depends on the weather.

The phrase 'nature and nurture' is a convenient jingle of words, for it separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which personality is composed. Nature is all that a man brings with himself into the world; nurture is every influence without that affects him after his birth.

Once the festival achieved a certain level of notoriety, then people began to come here with agendas that were not the same as ours. We can't do anything about that. We can't control that.

I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body: they transmit movement to it.

Chicken Tikka Massala is now a true British national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences.

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheel-work of the universe.

The actual and valuable material of all human utterances —is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.

Our destiny is determined, not by what we possess, but by what possess us.

Our identity is fictional, written by parents, relatives, education, society.

We're all products of our own environment.

There are so many things that can take over your life: money, alcohol, drugs - even fashion. People hand you things, and you start to believe life is easy. And it's not like that - you're not supposed to be the person you play in the movies.

I try to keep away exterior events that are going to make me do something negative internally to myself.

At the end of the day, what you're able to work on is what comes by you, what sort of floats by you.

There are two ways in which a science develops; in response to problems which is itself creates, and in response to problems that are forced on it from the outside.

There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need only do inner work...that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself....The fact is, a person is so formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.

You can't reinvent the wheel. You've got to just take the best from all the other shows and try to make it work, because there's the "live show Gods" that dictate if there are going to be any surprises, if there's a very commercial film that's a Best Picture. There are a lot of things that are out of my control, but I do my best.

What happens in the world affects me. Sometimes, that's part of the writing.

We delude ourselves into believing that morality comes from somewhere else, whereas in reality we behave as we've been told to behave.

Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices.