“True influence consists in surpassing one's model not in reproducing it.”

"Likeness to God", an address in Providence, Rhode Island (1828) http://www.americanunitarian.org/likeness.htm
Context: I affirm, and would maintain, that true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being. Its noblest influence consists in making us more and more partakers of the Divinity. For this it is to be preached. Religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn men's aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul, which constitutes it a bright image of God. Such is the topic now to be discussed; and I implore Him, whose glory I seek, to aid me in unfolding and enforcing it with simplicity and clearness, with a calm and pure zeal, and with unfeigned charity.

Zeno, 53.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 7: The Stoics

A. Wayne Wymore (1970) Systems Engineering Methodology. Department of Systems Engineering, The University of Arizona, p. 14/2; As cited in: J.C. Heckman (1973) Locating traveler support facilities along the interstate system--a simulation using general systems theory. p. 43.

As quoted in The New Dictionary of Thoughts : A Cyclopedia of Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1960) compiled by Tryon Edwards, C. N. Catrevas, Jonathan Edwards, and Ralph Emerson Browns.

H. G. Wells The Outline of History (1920) p. vii.
Criticism of The Martyrdom of Man

The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe (1915)

Statement of 1739, as quoted in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence, p. 286.
Variant reported in Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men (1887) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 451: "True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can."
Attributed

Source: ARIS architecture and reference models for business process management (2000), p. 380.

Aliens Cause Global Warming (2003)