Quotes About Influence

When a child is small, it is his mother who is mainly responsible for the way he is brought up. So it was with me. I belonged in those days to my mother rather than my father.

Fellini belongs to nature.

I would just encourage people: your childhood belongs to you, and don't give anyone, especially me, the power to ruin your childhood.

I'm not religious. But I grew up religious in the Bible Belt.

His struggle to mold me in his image had been successful after all. The old walrus in fact managed to instill in me a great and burning ambition; it had simply found expression in an unintended pursuit. He never understood that the Devils Thumb was the same as medical school, only different.

going to have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them in the future because they will think they have bought my respect. Chris

Jackson lead as he lived, sometimes with his heart, sometimes with his mind, sometimes with both.

History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. —JAMES BALDWIN

You have to appeal to people's best instincts, not their worst ones. You may win an election or so by doing the other, but it does a lot of harm to the country.

All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.

A president sets a tone for the nation and helps tailor habits of heart and of mind.

Dignified theatricality is an essential element of power.

Politicians, singers, and preachers are in the same business, using sound to move hearts and change minds.

An interest willing to suppress speech was an interest willing to put its own power ahead of democracy.

John Adams had foreseen how central the president would be in American life. "His person, countenance, character, and actions, are made the daily contemplation and conversation of the whole people," Adams wrote in 1790.

I tell you this: you do not lead by hitting people over the head. Any damn fool can do that, but it's usually called 'assault'—not 'leadership.'… I'll tell you what leadership is. It's persuasion—and conciliation—and education—and patience. It's long, slow, tough work. That's the only kind of leadership I know—or believe in—or will practice.

The great good news about America—the American gospel, if you will—is that religion shapes the life of the nation without strangling it.

1940, fearing a third Roosevelt term, the Third Reich had sought to influence the presidential election by placing newspaper ads and paying for isolationist congressmen to attend the Republican National Convention.

you do not lead by hitting people over the head. Any damn fool can do that, but it's usually called 'assault'—not 'leadership.'… I'll tell you what leadership is. It's persuasion—and conciliation—and education—and patience. It's long, slow, tough work.

Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.

the people are intelligent, the people are just, and in time these characteristics must have an effect on their Representatives.

Leadership, Jefferson was learning, meant knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world.

For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.32 (John Quincy Adams, a one-term president, was the single exception.)

philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.