Quotes About Control

Resolve that you will be the master and not the slave of circumstances.

If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.

The blowing winds are but our servants When we hoist a sail.

He could see Bonzo's anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hot, and so it used him.

I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.

because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no on ewould save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.

The have influence, but no power. In my experience, influence is power.

Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

I thought commanders could order anything." They can order the moon to turn blue, too, but it doesn't happen. Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.

In my experience, influence is power.

As history shows us, when colonization is voluntary, people will self-select better than any testing system. It's like those foolish attempts to control immigration to American based on the traits that were deemed desirable, when in fact the only trait that defines Americans historically is "descended from somebody willing to give up everything to live there." Willingness is the single most important test.

You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them to, Mother, you'll always feel betrayed. And because eventually everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat, Mother. You're the one who uses our love for us to try to control us.

You get all the pleasures of the puppeteer.

A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.

Government is all show when it isn't murder in the dark ... or soldiers in the open.

the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and one will ever save you.

And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: Tut-tut, what at botch that was? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?

Once you realize that power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it, I think that there are worse people who could have it than Peter.

Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hot, and so it used him.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you.