Quotes About Influence

Too often, when you are close to people in power, you're trying to make them happy; you're trying to tell them what they want to hear. But I find that really good leaders don't want that. They want the truth. And you do them a service, and yourself a service, by just being honest and straightforward.

My take on rap is driven by straightforward American southern rock and blues.

As a young boy, I had strange dreams of affecting people and somehow being instrumental in changing the makeup of Africa and helping to improve life there.

And it's very strange, but I think there is something very common - not only in Celtic music - but there is a factor or element in Celtic music that is similar in music that we find in Japan, the United States, Europe, and even China and other Asian countries.

Radio is a really strange business now, too. There's a very narrow door and a very few people control what gets played.

I think guitar-wise, Eric Clapton was a big influence on me. I got to spend time around him. He's kind of strange, mysterious, serious and he always has played such hot guitar.

The idea of celebrity has always been very strange to me because it's taking the focus away from the music and attaching it to a person. When we put someone on a pedestal or idolize them, we're giving our own power away.

What led me to be an actor is that I have a strange something in me that can drastically change the way I appear to the world. Growing up, I couldn't understand why people would always have different ideas of me - but because of that I became aware of how you can manipulate your own ability to change. And then I learned to make a career of it.

Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

It's a strange thing to keep having this image of you at the age of seven, 12 or 14 as the one that everyone not only remembers you by, but wants to think in some way that you still are.

A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.

There were so many odd, strange things about Abraham Lincoln that I think nobody knew how to pigeonhole him.

The media do strange things.

Exercising power can do strange things to people. You can become convinced that you're irreplaceable. You can become convinced that you're always right. And I think the danger is the longer you stay in power, the more likely that is to happen.

People feel like they know me, in a strange way, like they grew up with me or they went to high school with me!

I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that.

I never knew my father. He'd disappeared from the scene before I was born, and I still have no idea who he is. Perhaps strangely, it's never bothered me; I certainly don't believe it's really affected me.

Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries.

Most of the fans of Calpurnia are 'Stranger Things' fans, which is not a big deal at all. They're super loyal and incredible, and really do like the music. It's the people who aren't fans of the music and are just there because of 'Stranger Things' that really bother me.

I'm not a stranger to fan attention. I do have my share of admirers and fans. To me they are God. Whatever I am, whatever I've achieved is because of them.

While my mother tried to stem my truancy, it would be a complete stranger - an Army Officer in the Special Forces home on leave - who would be the mentor to drive home my mother's goal of getting me educated. His name was Saul Hassan.

I don't dislike 'It' or 'Stranger Things,' but I'm just not as super into it, because, like, I've seen 'E.T.' a lot. And I've watched 'The Goonies.'

I got so tired of everybody talking about 'Stranger Things,' I think I developed a mental block against watching it.

A guy stopped me in the street the other day as I was skipping and singing to myself while walking with my son, Hudson who was also dancing along. I didn't even realize I was doing it, it was just happening, and that made me smile. It rubs off on Hudson and it even rubbed off on a total stranger.