Quotes About Control

A strategist should think in terms of paralyzing, not of killing. —Basil Liddell Hart

It is as well to avoid illusions of control, but in the end all we can do is act as if we can influence events. To do otherwise is to succumb to fatalism.

El poder para hacer daño es poder para negociar. La capacidad para explotarlo se llama diplomacia, una diplomacia perversa, pero diplomacia».

Las estrategias, por tanto, no deberían entenderse como medios para conseguir el control sobre determinadas situaciones, sino como modos de afrontar situaciones en las que nadie tiene un control total.

El deseo es una acémila. Si la monta Dios, avanza y camina como Dios quiere; si la monta el diablo, avanza y camina como quiere el diablo. No puede elegir quién la monta (...) y los caballeros luchan por montarla. Lutero

El mayor poder es el que consigue que se haga lo que pretende sin que nadie se dé cuenta.

F]ortune governs one half of our actions, but even so she leaves the half more or less in our power to control." Even in this area of apparent control, it would be necessary to adapt to circumstances. Free will suggested the possibility of fitting events to an established character; Machiavelli suggested that the character would be shaped by events.

the art of creating power

Don't you see that the whole aim of newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? —George Orwell,

el ejército jominiano era un grupo de hombres convertidos en instrumentos de la voluntad del general a fuerza de disciplina e instrucción.

It is the art of creating power.

The core proposition was that a minority would always rule over a majority.

Who says organization, says oligarchy." This was Michels's "iron law.

Others of us may be unable to put aside our competitiveness or our need to be in control. We get bored, cranky, and frustrated; we're sore losers; we worry about teaching how to throw the ball correctly when our child just wants to play catch.

Every once in a while I don't think it's a bad idea for lawyers to remember that what goes on, at least on some level of our brains, is that we have to imagine everything coming apart. ... It's what we are. Out of control, always prepared, Boy Scout control freaks.

Assume full responsibility for the dream. For "through the dream the man makes the matter his own; it is in his will, and he is responsible for it."19

When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.

Mas apenas eleições não fazem uma democracia. Democracia quer dizer poder para o povo, mas poder quer dizer algo mais que apenas eleições. Em nossa tradição isso também significa controle através de críticas racionais.

Liberty in cyberspace will not come from the absence of the state. Liberty there, as anywhere, will come from a state of a certain kind. We build a world where freedom can flourish not by removing from society any self-conscious control, but by setting it in a place where a particular kind of self-conscious control survives. We build liberty as our founders did, by setting society upon a certain constitution.

The struggle in that world will not be government's. It will be to assure that essential liberties are preserved in this environment of perfect control. As Siva Vaidhyanathan puts it

Magic is the deliberate manipulation of coincidence.

Speak when you are angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.

The baby boom eventually prompted Hubbard to order that no one could get pregnant without his permission; according to several Sea Org members, any woman disobeying his command would be "off-loaded" to another Scientology organization or flown to New York for an abortion.

How inadequate we are in our attempts to bring nature under our control, Henry thought. How careless of us to believe that we can manipulate diseases to kill, rather than to cure. We're like schoolchildren playing with matches. One day we'll burn the house down.