Control Quotes

...I'm a modern mountebank - I believe in Physiognomy - after all, we are in control of our face - it's the map of where we've been...

~ John Geddes

Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won, because people have ceased to consider religion so important as it was once thought to be. But in politics and economics, which have taken the place formerly occupied by religion, there is a growing tendency to persecution, which is not by any means confined to one party.

~ Bertrand Russell

Break the character and independence of your man and you will have an obedient trooper.

~ Jan Valtin

Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.

~ Sigmund Freud

Besides, immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control things.

~ E.l. James

The person doing the worrying experiences it as a form of love, the person being worried about experiences it as a form of control.

~ John Lanchester

The real problem is I'm greedy. I want complete, utter, unceasing bliss. But I don't want to fall into it either. If happiness were money I wouldn't want to win the lottery. I want to accomplish it, urn it as John Houseman would say. I want it to be an achievement because I want to be in control of my life. I don't want things to happen to me, I want them to happen because of me. Power I want. I want to feel the way I do when I stretch a new canvas and I want to feel that way all the time. the blank canvas fills me with the power of imminent creation. I'm its god an it always bends to my will and when I'm done I know, inside, that it's markedly better than what almost all of my similarly-engaged others can achieve. That's happiness.

~ Sergio De La Pava

Fortunately, we are not in control.

~ Willie Nelson

Love. It seemed impossible that she could love him, but she was so deep in him there was really nowhere to go but further in. So this is what love was. Uncontrollable. Consuming. But so irresistible you wanted to be consumed.

~ Dianna Hardy

No, I wanted to say, he didn't cut off her hands because he didn't have to, he had cut them off long before, with years of keeping all authority in his own palms, all the rules and all the power and all the answers emanating from him and no one else. And if you don't understand that, if you've never been in such a family, then you can't know the way the mind shackles itself and amputates its own limbs so adeptly that you never think to miss them, never think that you had anything so obscene as choice.

~ Carolina De Robertis

I used to send my characters into a fire that necessarily consumed them, but I have learned, a little, how to send them through the fire to a new place. The characters who do not change — most notably Nakota in Cipher, Bibi in Skin, and Lena in Kink — are motivated by an essential selfishness or self-centeredness, an unwillingness to relinquish control to the process, a refusal to become.

~ Kathe Koja

The mind is powerful, and you have more control than you think.

~ Scott D. Lewis

No true love is possible, Lewis demonstrates, until we abandon our claims, our rights, our grievances. Until then we will be trapped in the obscurity of our heart's mixed motives, our will to possess, to control, to be our own gods.

~ Michael D. O'brien

When things run out of control it is because we failed to control how reality plays out. How you manage and control your reality will come to determine your life.

~ Steven Redhead

We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people’s validation, recognition, rewards. It’s far better when doing the work itself is sufficient. When fulfilling our own internal standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. The less attached we are to the outcomes, the better. Our ego wants recognition & compensation. We have expectations. Let the effort, not the results be enough. Maybe your parents/kids/partner/etc won’t be impressed. We can’t let THAT be what motivates us. We can change the definition of success to: ‘peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.’ With this definition we decide not to let externals determine if something is worth doing. It’s on us.

~ Ryan Holiday

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

~ Indira Gandhi

When the fight begins within himself a man's worth something.

~ Robert Browning

To put a tempting face aside when duty demands every faculty is a lesson which takes most men longest to learn.

~ Gertrude Atherton

Lack of discipline leads to frustration and self-loathing.

~ Marie Chapian

You must have discipline to have fun.

~ Julia Child

Self-command is the main elegance.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A little kingdom I possess Where thoughts and feelings dwell And very hard the task I find Of governing it well.

~ Louisa May Alcott

Everybody's business is nobody's business and nobody's business is my business.

~ Clara Barton

I listen and give input only if somebody asks.

~ Barbara Bush

The man who masters his own soul will forever be called conqueror of conquerors.

~ Plautus

Temptations come as a general rule when they are sought.

~ Margaret Oliphant

A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.

~ Ida Tarbell

There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself.

~ Louis Xiv

Too often in ironing out trouble someone gets scorched.

~ Marcelene Cox

When you borrow trouble you give your peace of mind as security.

~ Myrtle Reed

Don't be curious of matters that don't concern you never speak of them and don't ask about them.

~ Teresa Of Ávila

I will write of him who fights and vanquishes his sins who struggles on through weary years against himself ... and wins.

~ Caroline Begelow Lerow

What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.

~ H. P. Liddon

Man who man would be must rule the empire of himself.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.

~ Bible

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

~ Marcus Annaeus Seneca

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

~ Erma Bombeck

If you can't write your message in a sentence you can't say it in an hour.

~ Dianna Booher

Sweet words are like honey a little may refresh but too much gluts the stomach.

~ Anne Bradstreet

I am indeed a king because I know how to rule myself.

~ Pietro Aretino