Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
It's not necessarily a large number of people that affect the culture. You don't count the number of influential voices, you weigh them. A hundred people can affect the culture.
I loved meditation. I love it because that's where you find what your voice is. You cannot really find it easily in this culture. This culture is the noisiest culture ever, ever. I think the damage that it has done to people is in that realm of silencing them. They are overwhelmed by gadgets. They don't know what to think because they're so heavily programmed about what it is that they should want and should think.
There is the voice that everybody hears... saying to you, "You should do this, you should be this, you ought to, you got to." And then there is the still small voice - for some people not so small - inside every human being that calls you to something that is greater than yourself.
Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascent to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable lonliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own.