Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

I feel like I’m changing pop culture.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

The Bible says that Christians are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. On the job, in the grocery store, even among unsaved friends and family members, God’s people are there to bring seasoning to an unsavory situation.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

I mean Facebook is no longer a company, it’s a country. 2 billion users. It can influence what we think, what we believe, how we vote, what we buy, even how we feel.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the People.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

When 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.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

Much of India that we dream of still lies ahead of us: housing, power, water and sanitation for all; bank accounts and insurance for every citizen; connected and prosperous villages; and, smart and sustainable cities.

I 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.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument… an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

The money in politics is a cash cow for the media.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

Not necessity, not desire – no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything – health, food, a place to live, entertainment – they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

A woman of the world is anxious to exhibit her form and shape, whether walking, standing, sitting, or sleeping. Even when represented as a picture, she desires to captivate with the charms of her beauty and, thus, to rob men of their steadfast heart.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives.

People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

Diana 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.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one’s self on lies and fables.

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

To see the right and not to do it is cowardice.

In Europe first and now in America, elected men have taken it upon themselves to indebt their people to create an atmosphere of dependency. And why? For their own selfish need to increase their own personal power.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

Power is competence.