Quotes About Control

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

Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.

It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.

Those who have a scientific outlook on human behaviour, moreover, find it impossible to label any action as 'sin'; they realise that what we do has its origin in our heredity, our education, and our environment, and that it is by control of these causes, rather than by denunciation, that conduct injurious to society is to be prevented.

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

A victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

there is no profit in feeling unless one learns to dominate it and impersonalise it. -

In our own day, there has been too much of a tendency towards authority, and too little care for the preservation of initiative. Men in control of vast organisations have tended to be too abstract in their outlook, to forget what actual human beings are like, and to try to fit men to systems rather than systems to men.

The conception of duty has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own.

it is flattering to suppose that the universe is controlled by a Being who shares our taste and prejudices.

It is only those in whom the desire to think truly is itself a passion who will find this desire adequate to control the passions of war. Only passion can control passion, and only a contrary impulse or desire can check impulse. Reason, as it is preached by traditional moralists, is too negative, too little living, to make a good life. It is not by reason alone that wars can be prevented, but by a positive life of impulses and passions antagonistic to those that lead to war.

Those who have the habit of controlling powerful mechanisms, and through this control have acquired power over human beings, may be expected to have an imaginative outlook towards their subjects which will be completely different from that of men who depend upon persuasion, however dishonest. Most of us have, at some time, wantonly disturbed an ants' nest, and watched with mild amusement the scurrying confusion that resulted.

The technique of acquiring dictatorship over what has been a democracy has been familiar since Greek times, and always involves the same mixture of bribery, propaganda and violence.

The laws of social dynamics are—so I shall contend—only capable of being stated in terms of power in its various forms. In order to discover these laws, it is necessary first to classify the forms of power, and then to review various important historical examples

Authoritative education, we may add, produces the slave type as well as the despotic type, since it leads to the feeling that the only possible relation between two human beings who cooperate is that in which one issues orders and the other obeys them.

To a great extent fatigue in such cases is due to worry, and worry could be prevented by a better philosophy of life and a little more mental discipline. Most men and women are very deficient in control over their thoughts. I mean by this that they cannot cease to think about worrying topics at times when no action can be taken in regard to them.

There are those who believe that almost any group of men, when once it has seized the machinery of the State, can, by means of propaganda, secure general acquiescence.

Love of independence is, in most cases, not an abstract dislike of external interference, but aversion from some one form of control which the government thinks desirable—prohibition, conscription, religious conformity, or what not. Sometimes such sentiments can be gradually overcome by propaganda and education, which can indefinitely weaken the desire for personal independence.

Any organization, however idealistic its professed aims, may degenerate into a tyranny unless the public firmly retains in its own hands some effective means of controlling leaders. Democracy is the only means so far discovered, but it will not be a completely effective means until it has been broadened and extended to economic regions from which as yet it is excluded. The essential data on this whole subject can only be obtained from a study of history.

Our present predicament is due more than anything else to the fact that we have learnt to understand and control to a terrifying extent the forces of nature outside us, but not those that are embodied in ourselves.

Those who affirm positively that God exists cannot avoid falling into an impiety. For if they say that God controls everything, they make Him the author of evil things; if, on the other hand, they say that He controls some things only, or that He controls nothing, they are compelled to make God either grudging or impotent, and to do that is quite obviously an impiety.

diktatörlüÄŸün baÅŸlang?çtaki amaçlar?nda iyi diye ne varsa despotizmin kaç?n?lmaz mant??? dolay?s?yla bunlar?n tümü yok olacak ve dikta iktidar?n? koruma amac?, devlet mekanizmas?n?n yal?n amac? olarak gitgide daha güçlü bir biçimde ortaya ç?kacakt?r...

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

Religion has existed since before the dawn of history, while science has existed for at most four centuries; but when science has become old and venerable, it will control our lives as much as religion has ever done. I foresee the time when all who care for the freedom of the human spirit will have to rebel against a scientific tyranny.