Quotes About Influence

most politically powerful right-wing families have an almost perfect record of advocating numerous wars while ensuring that their own sons and daughters do not risk their lives to fight in them.

Radical expansions of power are often introduced in this way, by persuading people that they affect just a specific, discrete group.

He had come to believe that the paper's concealment of that information may very well have changed the outcome of the 2004 election. "Hiding that story changed history," he said.

I heard the Beatles and the Stones, and Mom bought me an electric guitar. I played lead for four years and then switched to bass. One day someone suggested that I should sing, so I sheepishly stepped up to the microphone and the rest is rock history.

The Vatican has a reputation for secrecy and intrigue. If I have my way, that will cease. But in any large organization there are always groups who seek to have their way with power and cunning.

We'll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.

It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate.

I'd like to be played as a child by Natalie Wood. I'd have some romantic scenes as Audrey Hepburn and have gritty black-and-white scenes as Patricia Neal.

Remember: "For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost, for want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the battle was lost, for want of a battle, the war was lost." This parable should be the mantra of everyone who thinks her or his vote doesn't count.

I began to see that for some, religion was just a form of politics you couldn't criticize.

I wonder: If you think of someone you love, do you become a little more like them? I would like to think so.

We'll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.

At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I'm "passing the torch." I explain that I'm keeping my torch, thank you very much—and I'm using it to light the torches of others.

In truth, we don't know which of our acts in the present will shape the future. But we have to behave as if everything we do matters. Because it might.

She didn't put her finger to the wind; she became the wind.

All movements need a few people who can't be fired.

Your daughters are watching you.

the model for the U.S. Constitution was not ancient Greece but the Iroquois Confederacy. Then

Because we tend to treat others as we have been treated, a trustworthy system leads to more trust, corruption leads to more corruption, violence to more violence.

The voting booth is the one place on Earth where the least powerful and the most powerful are equal.

she is still better known than most living movie stars, most world leaders, and most television personalities. The surprise is that she rarely has been taken seriously enough to ask why that is so.

At first, feminists were assumed to be only discontented suburban housewives; then a small bunch of women's "libbers", bra burners, and radicals; then women on welfare; then briefcase carrying imitations of male executives; then unfulfilled women who forgot to have children; then women voters...that really could decide elections. That last was too dangerous, so suddenly we were told we were in a "postfeminist" age...

Nor was he around when I finally understood that having a loving and nurturing father made a lifetime of difference. Only after I saw women who were attracted to distant, condescending, even violent men did I begin to understand that having a distant, condescending, even violent father could make those qualities seem inevitable, even feel like home. Because of my father, only kindness felt like home.

Everytime a woman looks in a mirror and criticizes her body, a girl is watching.