Quotes About Influence

The first music that came to my ear was gospel... I used to sing 'Amazing Grace' with a very strong southern accent and a vibrato already at five years old.

The Southern California arena rock, hair metal, laidback hippie garden culture - for many growing up in the '70s and '80s, none of it made us who we were like Lou Reed did.

Reggae is definitely a natural influence. Even living in Southern California, near the water, you get that reggae feel.

I was a Southern California boy raised on rap music and cussed like a sailor.

I have always identified with Joan Didion's depiction of Los Angeles and Southern California, ever since reading 'Play It As It Lays,' 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' and 'The White Album.'

When Kennedy could not get the civil rights bill passed - and he was the big liberal - Lyndon Johnson came in and it got passed, and he was the conservative and the southerner. So sometimes in politics, to get something done, it takes a special kind of knowledge and a special kind of person, but it doesn't always follow the party lines.

Writing about where I was from and the people I knew was not something that would have occurred to me early on, because like so many Southerners of that period - the Sixties - I rejected those things when I went north.

Before I was 20, I was the leading architect of the Southwest.

I've always loved the desert. I've spent most of my life in the Southwest. It's certainly influenced my work. I used to dream about it when I was young.

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty.

In the age of globalisation, pooled sovereignty means more power, not less.

History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.

For an American, as mad you may be about whatever the EPA or the IRS does, just imagine if you only had a one twenty-eighth vote over what it does. You were in this place with this big bureaucracy that sets rules, and you only have a small vote. You'd feel like you've given up your sovereignty, wouldn't you?

At present, England, America, France, Italy, and Japan constitute the so-called 'Big Five.' Even with the rise of Germany and Soviet Russia, the world has only seven Powers. When China becomes strong, she can easily win first place in the Council of Nations.

History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees.

The number one foreign policy goal of Russia is control of the former Soviet space.

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed, and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi.

The connection between the Soviet Union and Czech people - or Czech politicians - was very big. It was like a model country for us. But it wasn't the best model, so a lot of Czechs don't like to speak about Russia or the Soviet Union.

One of the obsessions that the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist parties had was always controlling the message - all information that everybody gets has to be carefully controlled and monitored. Art was no exception.

Abraham Lincoln once noted that 'the ballot is stronger than the bullet.' Foreign adversaries, who can't match the military, economic or diplomatic power of the U.S., understand Lincoln's wisdom. They seek to sow chaos and confusion in our electoral process to gain an advantage over us.

I was late to the Knicks. My dad was a big fan. But I first started watching baseball; I became a Red Sox fan. My dad was a Mets fan. I wanted to have my own team and league.

A lot of the moves I make originate from futsal. It's played in a very small space, and the ball control is different in futsal. And to this day my ball control is pretty similar to a futsal player's control.

I don't know how, at an age when you're trying to put your identity together, how you cope with the pressure of a performance space, which is what social media is.

And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that's there.