Influences Quotes

When you see all of these bands citing you as influences, it makes you feel relevant.

You may be pulling from different influences because of different things that are going on in your life, different people that are around you and more experiences to pull from.

My biggest musical influences are probably my parents.

I think, in the early years, my biggest influences would have been… Daft Punk was a huge one for me, I bought their main record when I was nine; at a young age, I was into music. The Prodigy, Gorillaz were big ones.

In my vocal, I think you can hear something of my earlier times when I’d sing in subway halls for the echo and perform doo-wop on street corners. But I had a lot of influences, too – singers like Sam Cooke, Brook Benton and Roy Hamilton.

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

I was never academically driven in English, but, again, Tom Waits is a perfect example of an influence. He writes so immaculately and paints so perfectly a world and the characters within it. There are writers like that who are my influences: vivid and gifted storytellers.

Events of human origin are uncertain, but all is regulated and governed by the incalculable power of God, inspiring us not through drunken fury nor by frantic movement, but through the influences of the stars.

People ask what my influences are, and for me, it’s not always obvious. One of my biggest inspirations was Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders. That’s based on how she just does whatever she wants to do, and I love her attitude about everything. It bleeds over into my way of thinking and comedy.

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?

Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.

In every book I write, I try to name-check the most prominent influences, or the most prominent conscious influences.

You boil down your influences to a soup, and it all informs you.

Time control directly influences the quality of play.

Part of me still feels like I’ve never had the opportunity to properly express all my earliest influences, so for now, I find isolation to be my biggest influence.

I surround myself with guys who are pretty successful, good people, and I think the two biggest influences in my life lately have been Tim Tebow and Ryron Gracie.

Whether you are on the Right or the Left, everyone can agree that there are a lot of outside influences in American politics that are not good for the system. There’s just too much money.

It is imperfection – not perfection – that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain, and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.

Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.

If I see a fashion show with literal influences, it doesn’t make me think any more. It doesn’t make me dream.

Census data influences decisions made from Main Street to Wall Street, in Congress and with the Federal Reserve. Not to mention, the American people who look to, and trust, the data the government releases on our nation’s unemployment, state of our economy, and health insurance coverage.

When I became older and started to become more in tune with my political leanings, there was a disconnect between the feminist in me and the hip hop side of me, and I don’t know if, in some way, those influences are also present in Tupac’s work.

I had a lot of very religious influences – Christian religious.

As I was coming up, it always seemed like I was learning. If it wasn’t from school, it was the ‘hood. The influences of the ‘hood are very powerful.

I have only read very classic traditional English ghost stories, other than Henry James, who wrote some magnificent short ones as well as the longer ‘Turn of the Screw.’ He, Dickens, and M.R. James are my influences.

A lot of EDM is not bad at all when it’s simple, but a lot of it is not really musical. That’s just what I really like to do: taking what I had at the beginning, which is classical and jazz influences, and putting it into electro.

Sometimes my influences are really on my sleeve. So I just make sure to wear a lot of sleeves.

The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe.

I think EDM and metal and rock have been together already for a long time. Bands like Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, the Prodigy – they all have influences from both.

Do it now. It is not safe to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of the world.

We do the press because we know logically it influences how we are perceived, but we don’t pay attention to it after the fact.

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

The way I was brought up by my parents and guided through my football life by the influences of various managers means that in some ways I am black and white.

I can’t list all the influences that Lady Gaga has given me and my generation.

When my dad played me ‘Walking Man,’ I heard those chord changes and that melody, it completely blew me away. Maybe you wouldn’t really hear the James Taylor influences in my music, but they’re definitely buried in there.

A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.

Kids are naturally curious about what they don’t know, or don’t understand, or what is foreign to them. They only learn to be frightened of those differences when an adult influences them to behave that way and censors that natural curiosity.

Climate change – for so long an abstract concern for an academic few – is no longer so abstract. Even the Bush administration’s Climate Change Science Programme reports ‘clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.’

My major influences were primarily guitar players and bands; I started playing bass by accident.

I guess my main influences are Jesus, rock ‘n’ roll and ex-wives. In that order.

My mum was raised Jewish, my dad is very scientifically minded, and my school was vaguely Christian. We sang hymns in school. I liked the hymns bit, but apart from that, I can take it or leave it. So I had lots of different influences when I was younger.

I know it is very hard to rise above the influences of party prejudice. Often, it almost drowns the sentiment of patriotism. Party rancor and party hatred are the last serpents which the genius of patriotism can crush.

Real cultural diversity results from the interchange of ideas, products, and influences, not from the insular development of a single national style.

I love the English language, the colors of it, the many, many nuances, the different influences. I find German stilted, in a way, by comparison.

The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren’t simply hobbies or minor influences. They are hugely important in the affirmation of differences between groups and social classes and in the reproduction of those differences.

I’m sure I could start a band tomorrow that would have different influences and would want to do something completely different than anything I’ve done.

My wife and I have this discussion all the time. Her primal influences are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald. Mine are Rudyard Kipling, Edith Nesbit and T.H. White. So, we have certain structural differences in form and content right off the bat!

Spike Lee is one of my biggest influences. What I love about Spike, other than he’s just a fun guy to hang around, is that Spike is fearless. As much as people talk about him being politically outspoken, let’s not forget that he’s one of the best screenwriters, ever, in addition to being a visual master.

As a born-again Christian, I believe God actively and directly influences me to action.

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

Western influences have turned the world into a small global village, particularly through television and other mediums.

How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are forever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected.

There were a whole lot, I bought every blues record I could find, it wasn’t just one or two people. My vocal influences were Ray Charles and Bobby Blue Bland.

I think for me, growing up as an only child, I didn’t have a lot of people around me or a lot of foreign influences, so growing up, I really kind of got lost in my imagination – for the better.

We have to deal with the way that race influences our criminal justice system.

Carol Burnett, Gilda Radner, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are my comedic influences. I like a lot of dudes, too, like Bill Murray and Will Ferrell.

The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren’t simply hobbies or minor influences.

My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties – Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.

I am passionate about God, about Jesus, and what His influences do to me.

My folks have played everything from rock, disco, pop, funk, and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz, classical, and Latin. With all this in my pocket, I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.

The United States influences government and life everywhere else.

Did people think I sounded black? Totally, but that was a marketing tool as well, but also this is how I grew up and these are my influences.

I grew up on Dilla, Timbaland, Pharrell, all these drums that are super pocketed, so all those influences come out on a song like ‘Ungrateful Eyes,’ with all the crazy drum swing.

People always ask me who my role models are and who I want to be like, and I don’t wanna be like anybody; I wanna be me. I look up to a lot of people, and they have had great influences on me, but I wanna be original and different.

Always my collections are made of different influences.

I’ve definitely grown and evolved as a person, as an artist, you know. Just in terms of my style, my taste, my influences, everything… That’s a part of being an artist I think.

Women are about the best lovers of nature, after all; at least of nature in her milder and more familiar forms. The feminine character, the feminine perceptions, intuitions, delicacy, sympathy, quickness, are more responsive to natural forms and influences than is the masculine mind.

Childhood, all me influences were, say, between the time that I can remember, which would have been about three years old to the time that I was about five or six years old, all the music that I ever heard was jazz and it was American jazz, and it was big-band jazz, to be more defined.

I didn’t know what kind of sound I wanted to make. I didn’t have no influences. I just heard my voice in the microphone and was like, damn, I like that.

A lot of music influences me in other ways than this, but I’ve always taken a lot of influence from Stevie Wonder, Frank Ocean, and Jeff Rosenstock for the Rex music. They were also the first three artists that released albums where I enjoyed every song.

India’s connection with philanthropy didn’t begin with western influences. The connection with philanthropy is age-old and ingrained in our value systems.

My first influences for playing were Johnny Ramone and Jimmy Page, the same as everybody else. Joe Perry. The guys in Alice Cooper’s band, whatever their names were. Mick Ronson from David Bowie. You know who really influenced me to write songs? Iron Maiden.

In the seventeenth century, the science of medicine had not wholly cut asunder from astrology and necromancy; and the trusting Christian still believed in some occult influences, chiefly planetary, which governed not only his crops but his health and life.

Nature’s patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It’s nature’s version of nature versus nurture.

‘The Beatles’ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.

America is a mosaic not of groups but of individuals, each of whom carries a host of cultural influences, some chosen, some inherited, some absorbed by osmosis. That mosaic is held together by the pursuit of happiness, the most powerful mortar ever conceived. Left alone, it will long endure.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

One of my biggest influences, of course, is David Simon and his work on ‘The Wire.’

When we first began and I was 14, my influences were the stuff that was in my parent’s record collection like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

I grew up in a family with two very strong women, my mother and my older sister, and they were big influences on my life. I’ve spent a life loving women, and studying them as much as I can, or am allowed to.

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.

Albert Brooks is definitely one of my biggest influences, for sure.

Panama’s a really wonderful country. There’s obviously the Panama Canal, which brings a lot of tourism, and a huge American influence; it’s just a mix of so many great things: African, Caribbean, Latin American Spanish, all kinds of influences there.

The nature of music is mysterious and so much so that it generates strong emotions within us. It moves along passages that reach the most intimate areas of our psyche without being tried by prejudices or influences of any kind.

And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.

Everybody has their own style. I’m very particular in what I like, and I try to keep it that way. I always have big appreciation for other people’s styles, and I love seeing how other people dress themselves through their own influences.

I don’t have any influences, any heroes, it’s just me.

Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.

The way you think influences the way you feel, and the way you feel determines how you act.

Everybody influences everybody else, in my opinion. There are different trends in music all the time. No matter who starts them, if it’s a true trend in the music, it ends up influencing other people as well.

Any creation of art is conceived and born under influences, amidst the atmosphere of reverie and the most customary volition of the artist. It is there, in any case, that his work arises from.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

If I were to categorize what I sing, I have many different influences, and a lot of them are from back in time.

When I grew up, I had influences as diverse as Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix.

Color is a power which directly influences the soul.

Jimi Hendrix is one of the main influences on why I wanted to play guitar. He really shook me. I think it was his whole style – the look and what he did with the guitar.

My first child is going to be the oldest sibling to the next kid, and that may change with each and every year. I’m looking forward to how one baby influences the other, and to my family as a whole, to every single chapter.

I think one of my biggest influences is Bette Davis. I’ve seen almost every one of her films, and she’s been very inspiring to me.

All the skateboarding brands that I was into had graphic T-shirts. In the ’90s, there were different styles that went along with the different influences in skateboarding, whether that be hip-hop or rock and roll and grunge. And that’s what I was into, so I was following all that.

My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.

A child rightly trained may be a world-wide blessing, with an influence reaching onward to eternal years. But a neglected or misdirected directed child may live to blight and blast mankind, and leave influences of evil which shall roll on in increasing volume till they plunge into the gulf of eternal perdition.

Gospel influences your soul. If you’ve had church in your background… it’s just a part of your musical DNA.

From spending my decades thinking about behavior and the biological influences on it, I’m convinced by now free will is what we call the biology that hasn’t been discovered yet. It’s just another way of stating that we’re biological organisms determined by the physical laws of the universe.

I’ve had my moments of insanity. But there is a certain responsibility to set proper examples for your children, and that influences your choices in every aspect of your life.

Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individual’s contribution far more than the individual himself.

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

I come from a very musical family, and a songwriter, a musician, is a byproduct of the influences of his life, whether cultural, artistically, or emotionally.

Some people might be surprised that ‘Rambo’s creator has a doctorate in American literature. One of my influences is Henry James, whose major theme is awareness. Whether I’m writing about military personnel, law enforcement, or De Quincey, the persistent theme is paying attention in a hostile world.

In the past, modeling influences were largely confined to the styles of behavior and social practices in one’s immediate community. The advent of television vastly expanded the range of models to which members of society are exposed day in and day out.

One of my biggest influences is Fela Kuti.

A person needs at intervals to separate himself from family and companions and go to new places. He must go without his familiars in order to be open to influences, to change.

My influences are Alice in Chains and Elton John.

When I came to the Senate in 1997, the world was being redefined by forces no single country controlled or understood. The implosion of the Soviet Union and a historic diffusion of economic and geopolitical power created new influences and established new global power centers – and new threats.

I love the Beatles, and when I was very young, I had young parents, so Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles constantly were big influences on my life.

When starting a project, your influences are the things around you. It doesn’t mean you have to sound like it or look like it or anything. It’s just something new, and your curiosity becomes enthralled by it.

Ultimately, I’d say a lot of my vocal influences are jazz-based, people like Ella Fitzgerald, or Fred Astaire.

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.

I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn’t have a lot of outside influences, so I was able to make my own decisions about what I wanted to do.

If it wasn’t for KISS, there would be no Guns N’ Roses. Bands like that made Guns N’ Roses. We were five guys with five personalities and five different influences. The stars were aligned for us.

Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child’s life – the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you’ll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

In terms of social media, I try to have my voice heard loudly in the cacophony of other influences whether from television and the Internet or social media… I want my voice to be heard in terms of the standards and values that I try to pass on to my kids.

With ‘Hail To The King’ – our last album – we obviously wore our influences on our sleeve, and it was a blatant attempt to turn on our younger generation of fans to more classic-sounding metal.

Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We’re trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.

I grew up singing a lot of Martina McBride, Shania and LeAnn Rimes, and because of my age, those were my main influences.

The E Street band casts a pretty wide net. Our influences go all the way back to the early primitive garage music, and also, we’ve had everything in the band from jazz players to Kansas City trumpet players to Nils Lofgren, one of the great rock guitarists in the world.