The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar WildeWho controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George OrwellIf it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.
Dave GrohlI don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.
Mr. TIt confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.
DJ KhaledO God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!
William ShakespeareI must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
Benjamin DisraeliI grew up reading science fiction.
Jeff BezosParadise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.
Samuel JohnsonI’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.
Kurt CobainThe greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.
Bob MarleyThe first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.
Huey NewtonBetween the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.
Charles BukowskiPoliticians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. ClarkeMadonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.
Kanye WestEarly on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.
Maya AngelouMovies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.
Walt DisneyThere is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.
Lou HoltzWhen I did ‚Bird,‘ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.
Clint EastwoodYet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.
Virginia WoolfMy literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.
Paulo CoelhoI have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.
Nelson MandelaI have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.
Stephen CurryWhile working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.
Alice MunroA book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.
Ray BradburyWe are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.
Virginia WoolfI was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.
Kurt VonnegutMy style influences my music and everything around me.
Bad BunnyWhen you say ‚follow me on Twitter,‘ and you get 10 million people to follow you – you just leveraged your influence to add value to an app that you have no ownership in.
Nipsey HussleI found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.
Narendra ModiThe man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
Oscar WildeJack Kerouac influenced me quite a bit as a writer… in the Arab sense that the enemy of my enemy was my friend.
Hunter S. ThompsonA general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
Douglas MacArthurA poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Robert FrostThe bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.
Alexander PopeKids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.
Michelle ObamaWhen the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.
Stephen CoveyRead with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.
Christopher HitchensIn every author let us distinguish the man from his works.
VoltaireOur chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.
Richard M. NixonI have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is remembered from childhood and is the common property of all who were brought up in English-speaking communities.
Dylan ThomasLanguage is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.
Noam ChomskyIf I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.
Maya AngelouBroadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
Winston ChurchillOnly God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.
Billy GrahamAll books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
John RuskinBooks! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.
BonoI became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allan PoeIf I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
Emily DickinsonThe United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.
Fidel CastroPresumptuous for me to say, but at least – at a minimum – I’ve been able to influence the direction of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. And I’ve been relatively – presumptuous to say – relatively successful legislatively in the Senate, being able to win a lot of Republican friends, and being able to cross the aisle.
Joe BidenIt was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James BaldwinWhatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.
Stephen KingIt’d be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren’t kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I’m not a baby sitter.
EminemI hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
John SteinbeckHe ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.
Emily DickinsonBhai was my hero and he had immense influence on me.
Sunil ChhetriWhat do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?
John RuskinDiana Ross is a big inspiration to all of us. We all grew up watching everything about her – her mike placement, her grace, her style and her class.
Beyonce Knowles