Quotes About Influence

I like people like Andre Malraux, Edmund Wilson, Willa Cather, Robert Graves, Erik Erikson, and Francis Steegmuller.

The male singers who had the same range I did, when I was growing up, didn't do much for me. But put on Nina Simone, Carmen McRae or Nancy Wilson, and I'd be in seventh heaven. Female vocalists just did more with their voices, and that's why I paid more attention to them.

The person whose work introduced me to the craft was Lorraine Hansberry. The person who taught me to love the craft was Tennessee Williams. The person who really taught me the power of the craft was August Wilson, and the person who taught me the political heft of the craft was Arthur Miller.

You don't have to be Wilt Chamberlain to get into the Basketball Hall of Fame. If you don't have a sweet turnaround jumper from 18 feet, the best route to the Hall is fatherhood. Daniel Biasone, aka the 'father of the 24-second clock,' made the cut.

Dave Bassett was a key influence on me, the way he treated and talked to people. Wimbledon and Sheffield United were quite direct sides and he got the best out of what he had, but he was an innovator.

I was like, 'I'm going to win Wimbledon!' I was crazy competitive, leg-slapping, all of that. But when I was 12, I saw 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape,' and it just opened my eyes to what movies can do and how they change us, and I was like, 'This is what I want to do. This is what I have to do.'

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

You can't win the hearts and minds of the masses unless you inspire them - you must lift their spirits and enliven their hearts.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

The further you go in life, the more you realize what you're going to leave this Earth. It's not going to be, 'It was a great platform. It was great to win the Super Bowl,' but really and truly what you're going to leave on this Earth is the influence on others.

What Gramsci is all about is hegemony: you win the battle of ideas and it dominates.

We pay a price when special interests win out over the collective national interest.

Kids are the ultimate form of motivation. They're watching. They're mimicking. They're an extension of you. So you have to win.

Presumptuous for me to say, but at least - at a minimum - I've been able to influence the direction of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. And I've been relatively - presumptuous to say - relatively successful legislatively in the Senate, being able to win a lot of Republican friends, and being able to cross the aisle.

Bulls do not win bull fights. People do.

If you win a Super Bowl before you're fired, you're a genius, and everyone listens to you. But a coach is just a guy whose best class in grammar school was recess and whose best class in high school was P.E. I never thought I was anything but a guy whose best class was P.E.

What's so amazing in today's society is people look up to football players. And as a football player, you have a platform. And it's so much more important than any touchdown or trophy or anything you could win with football. Its taking that platform and be able to influence people.

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how many people remember you when you die.

I like to think of sales as the ability to gracefully persuade, not manipulate, a person or persons into a win-win situation.

The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all directions.

Usually, we find it difficult to control our mind. It seems as if our mind is like a balloon in the wind - blown here and there by external circumstances.

I am in love with old school funk and soul music. That's what I grew up listening to, and I want to bring that style back with my music. I love artists like Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake, and more!

Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.