Quotes About Influence

I always sold other peoples' fashions, so I wore jeans and t-shirts, and I put on what they needed to sell, and I'd sell it. So as far a nurturing my own style, it took me quite a long time to do it.

My father was the role model I looked up to. My dad was an entertainer, too. I patterned my life after him. He wanted me to do better than he did. He never sold a record in his life, but to me, he was still a rock star.

When I was younger, I would see shea butter being sold on the street, and I was interested how people were still coating themselves in the theater of Africanism. You see that in dashikis and hairstyles and music.

I've sold a lot of records. Did I keep other artists from eating?

I was really lucky to have been raised in this really powerful matriarchy where my dad was around, but I was with my mom and my grandma most of the time. They were heavy influences on me. My mother has a career in technology; my grandma sold real estate.

I remember what it felt like when I was young, and I looked up to someone, and they would pay me just an ounce of attention. And some of the bands I listened to when I was young probably never even sold any albums, but it didn't matter to me. If I'd go up and say, 'Great show,' it would be amazing that they even would acknowledge me.

Frankly, a lot of candidates have no problem being sold to the highest bidder if it means they will win.

If people know they're being sold to, you can celebrate the sell.

I look at it like this: you may only sell 20,000 to 100,000 albums. But those albums are going to be heard by future doctors, lawyers, judges, firemen, etc. Those albums are being sold to the right people that move society. They're interested in what you have to say.

You have to make people feel things. I think that's what commercials are, from a commercial for a car, a phone or anything that might be, they want to do it. The first iPhone was sold by how exciting it was to hold pictures of your family, not how great a phone it was.

There was a time when the directors would sign me first and then go to the hero. There was a time when on my name a film used to be sold.

You wouldnt believe how much I got paid for Soldier Soldier after a TV exec drunkenly told me that they couldnt make it without me.

Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a 'government'; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will.

You cannot expect soldiers to change people's minds. That has to be done in other ways.

When I first played New York, it was with James Brown at the Apollo, and I was playing in a band under the name The Valentinos. I remember Sam Cooke saying, 'I want you to go in there with James Brown. I couldn't be as hard on you as James Brown would be.' But we came out marching like soldiers.

Even when I'm sitting up in this glass castle, I still got my street soldiers telling me what's happening.

In general, I hate films that are overtly either very masculine or very feminine, you know? The same way that I don't like a war movie about soldiers smashing people's heads. But a chick flick I like would be Cassavetes' movies. 'A Woman Under the Influence,' 'Husbands.'

With foreign officials come foreign merchants, and with foreign merchants come foreign soldiers. They will usurp our authority and influence to begin with, and in the course of time, our guests will have become our hosts.

At Participant, I am the board. I am the sole greenlight at the company. If something happened to me, that would be a problem.

I am called repeatedly and insidiously prime and sole minister.

As a human, I feel extremely compelled to use my platform and my influence in whatever way for the benefit and not just for my sole benefit.

American politicians are responsive almost solely to the interests and desires of their rich constituents and interest groups that primarily represent big business.

While mainstream media is led by profit, ratings and popularist culture and filtered by the current political climate, Alternative Media is lead solely by the convictions of the campaign and film maker.

What the printing press is to Christianity in the 16th century, that's what the Internet is doing to Islam now. It has opened up the monopoly over the interpretation of Islam that used to solely belong to the religious class.