Quotes About Influence

Every truth bends and reshapes itself or is reshaped by other forces.

Why are sex and violence always linked? I'm afraid they'll blur together in people's minds — sexandviolence — until we can't tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, "The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex."

When Your Vote Doesn't Count, Neither Do You

Voting is a civic sacrament, which should not be exercised carelessly.

Vote! It's your superpower.

Voting is people power.

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Wine and wealth change wise men's manners.

When he looked up and saw me walking toward him, he winked, causing me to stop dead in my tracks and gape. Clearly, his winks were some sort of superpower, because I swear that if he asked me to jump from the roof of a tall building and then winked, I'd jump.

My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin Pierce Adams imitating Samuel Pepys. I was quite apt to throw in a "bless the mark" at any spot, and to begin a sentence with "Lord" comma.

Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear — and devils, too.

People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote — a very different thing.

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Voting is the language of democracy.

There's no such thing as a vote that doesn't matter. It all matters.

Shape tomorrow by voting today.

And that conviction will, I dare say, be backed up by the greatest torrent of money ever poured out to influence an American election — poured out by the men who fear nothing so much as change and who want everything to stay as it is — only more so. This idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal — that you can gather votes like box-tops — is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

Your vote is your voice.

If Voting Changed Anything, They'd Abolish It

You can either vote by voting or vote by not voting. If you don't vote, someone else's vote counts more.

Dad, you're someone to look up to no matter how tall I've grown.

He did not belong to us, he belonged to the world.

So long as there's a jingle in your head, television isn't free.

The same media people that claim violence on TV doesn't influence people, are perfectly willing to sell you advertising time.