Barack Obama Quotes

To have influence, you really don't need to have power. But what you need more than anything else is to have that almost uncanny understanding of what matters to people.

The best way to persuade people is with your ears - by listening to them.

It definitely seems like we are connecting with people, which is nice, because I've had a lot of music do the same for me. It's not like I don't I understand why we get the reactions we do.

Why am I not just some old woman ranting in a room? I think because what I say connects with people's truths.

I think more than anything, people just want to be understood.

Unless you listen, people are weazened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.

A lot of people have told me, you know, that what I've written about, they identify with strongly.

It's good to find common ground with people. When you find common ground and you see things from other people's perspective, you can have a voice in their lives, you can have an influence.

I think I'm realizing I've always been able to move people, just getting people to talk.

I think listening to people is helpful.

For me, I think it's such an important thing to hear other people's stories, because you do find ways that either you can learn something from them, or you can identify with something that they've gone through. You realize that maybe what you're going through in life isn't just specific to you, that somebody else understands it, or you talk to someone and all of sudden you see something in a completely different way because of what they've said to you or shared with you.

Ultimately what we actors are doing is communicating with people who are feeling alone or feeling different or confused or whatever and you're communicating and saying, "Hey, I don't get to know you, but here's a piece of me and you're not alone. We're in this together." Hopefully that communication has maybe made some people feel less alone.

You have to walk in the other guy's moccasins. You have to think what they think. If you want to bring somebody onto your side, you have to figure out what motivates them. What do they need?

Connecting with Canadians isn't about what you say, it's about what you're listening to. It's about what you understand.

Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they'll say, 'God, he said exactly what I was thinking.' And when they begin to respect you, they'll follow you to the death.

The great thing about a song is that no one has to know your story. But if you tell it in a way that has clarity and means something to somebody else, then it can apply to their story.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

I came from battling, knowing about the lyrics. All that's cool, but if you want people to love you, you have to talk to them about what they go through.

As an actor, what you really want to do is communicate with people - this is my aim, my principle aim.

I'm an ordinary Hackney boy, and I can talk to people.

I don't feel like I need to preach to the world or nothing like that. I just feel like I share what I say, and if listeners get it, they get it. And I never underestimate the audience's ability to feel me.

Conversations are the most direct way to connect with people.

I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought. And they say, 'Hey, yeah!' And they like that.

If I can make a connection, one connection, to any one listener in the world, I consider that successful.

When you feel moved by the story, you want to tell that story.