My parents leaving a third world country to a first world country and building from nothing - that's really inspiring to me and it's influenced me in a positive way.
It has become evident that the primary lesson of the study of evolution is that all evolution is coevolution: every organism is evolving in tandem with the organisms around it.
The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.