Quotes About Control

A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash.

I could conceive of them as evil, monstrous, and devoid of decency. Or I could think of them as men and sometimes women who are so controlled by their pain, they're unable to care enough about the people they hurt to be able to change their reprehensible behavior.

Laugh—be jolly. There are those who think it lordly to be cold as a stone, but feelings are like wolves. When caged they become more ferocious, and at the end, they always escape.

All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles.

Getting information out of interviewees is sometimes like walking a large, reluctant cow: you have to turn the cow onto the right path while letting the cow believe it's doing the steering.

He wonders who decided which books were too dangerous to keep, and who it was that had to hunt down and collect the condemned books, like an executioner, ferrying them to their doom. He wonders if it is his father.

There is a long history, in the U.S. and elsewhere, of removing children as a means of political control.

All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing...It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles.

Getting information out of interviewees, she had learned over the years, was sometimes like walking a large, reluctant cow: you had to turn the cow onto the right path while letting the cow believe it was doing the steering.

She had learned, with Izzy's birth, how your life could trundle along on its safe little track and then, with no warning, skid spectacularly off course. Every time Mrs. Richardson looked at Izzy, that feeling of things spiraling out of control coiled around her again, like a muscle she didn't know how to unclench.

He wants the old man to deliver a biting comeback, he wants the old man to punch the pizza guy in his smirking face, he wants the old man to back away before the pizza guy says—or does—something worse. Before he lifts those hands that pound and flatten thick dough into compliance. The moment tautens and tightens,

As time went on, the concern unhooked itself from the fear and took on a life of its own. She had learned, with Izzy's birth, how your life could trundle along on its safe little track and then, with no warning, skid spectacularly off course. Every time Mrs. Richardson looked at Izzy, that feeling of things spiraling out of control coiled around her again, like a muscle she didn't know how to unclench.

Anger is fear's bodyguard

All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control.

He wonders who decided which books were too dangerous to keep, and who it was that had to hunt down and collect the condemned books, like an executioner, ferrying them to their doom.

I don't have a plan, I'm afraid...But then, no one really does, no matter what they say.

I wanted to kill her with my bare hands but it wouldn't have been Christian.

Rules, boundaries, and limitations

Stay calm and assertive

If you give only 80 percent leadership, your dog will give you 80 percent following. And the other 20 percent of the time he will run the show. If you give your dog any opportunity for him to lead you, he will take it.

Every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity, says the great Montesquieu, is tyrannical. A proposition which may be made more general thus: every act of authority of one man over another, for which there is not an absolute necessity, is tyrannical.

Gli ignoranti saranno sempre ignoranti, perché la forza è nelle mani di chi ha interesse che la gente non capisca, nelle mani del governo, dei neri, dei capitalisti...

You know where every impulse leads. Master all those that would carry you into situations you know and despise. If you cannot do that, you will never do anything.