The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

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.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

Remember that the essence of authority is that people willingly follow your lead.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

The 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.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

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.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

A word after a word after a word is power.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

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.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

When I was 8 years old, it mattered what my favorite singer said and wore and expressed opinions about.

People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.

I don’t think I ever thought of myself as Superman. But there were people who thought of me that way, and maybe I believed them a little.

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

I think it’s my responsibility, as a person of influence… to sometimes try to do what I can.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‚You don’t know how to use the English language,‘ or ‚How could you make that argument?‘ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

It 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.

Not only does God play dice, but… he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

The most obvious characteristic of science is its application: the fact that, as a consequence of science, one has a power to do things. And the effect this power has had need hardly be mentioned. The whole industrial revolution would almost have been impossible without the development of science.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

I think we all change each other’s paths. I don’t know which law idea that is in physics, but I don’t think any of us can live without affecting one another.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

Presumptuous 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.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

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.

Being acknowledged for your work is always a great accomplishment, whether it’s people in my city, kids in the street, all the way up to the Grammys.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

The secret to a long marriage is to stay gone.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee… I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.

When the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.

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.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.