Quotes About Control

He wasn't interested in asking questions, only in finding answers. What's the difference? asked Baedecker. He felt the conversation slipping out of his control, dropping away from him like an aircraft that had reached stall speed. The difference is that Scott took the line of least resistance, said Maggie. Like most people, he found it too uncomfortable to be out in the open, unsheltered by some shadow of authority. So when the questions got too hard, he settled for easy answers.

What in fuck do you fucking well think you're fucking doing?' The officer's broad helmet bobbed as he shouted. I thanked all of the gods that he was not a Sikh.

The advanced neocortex in the mind vampires we encounter is merely along for the ride. Mind vampires can speak words fluidly and feign altruism and social niceties, but all a mind vampire (as is true with any sociopath) really knows is fight or flight, ascendancy or submission, and hierarchy and control. And violence. Always violence. The violence of their will over yours. And they live to control you.

Sometimes things happen. Things happen even when you don't intend them to happen. Maybe at the beginning you had good intentions, or intentions you thought were harmlessm but before you knew it things got out of your control.

Sometimes things happen. Things happen even when you don't intend them to happen. Maybe at the beginning you had good intentions, or no intentions, or intentions you thought were harmless, but before you knew it things got out of control. ...Sometimes things take on a life of their own. You become powerless. There is nothing you can do to stop certain things from happening.

The roof was torn off the gym. God's way of telling the jocks that they'd better remember who's really charge.

Always lists to be made, as if writing items in neat vertical rows might stave off randomness and chaos.

And those who were against the regime felt that music was like a kind of oxygen, because this was the one place where they could really be free. And those musicians who were in favor of the regime were only too proud that such a wonderful institution existed under such a regime.

Although talent feels and looks predestined, in fact we have a good deal of control over what skills we develop, and we have more potential than we might ever presume to guess.

That all plays, bear baitings, 88 games, singing of ballads, buckler play, 89 or such like causes of assemblies of people, be utterly prohibited, and the parties offending severely punished by every alderman in his ward.

As Marcus Aurelius said millennia ago, pain "is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

People with well-developed emotional skills are also more likely to be content and effective in their lives, mastering the habits of mind that foster their own productivity; people who cannot marshal some control over their emotional life fight inner battles that sabotage their ability for focused work and clear thought. A

In short, out-of-control emotions can make smart people stupid.

pain "is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

the workings of the amygdala and its interplay with the neocortex are at the heart of emotional intelligence.

Los pensamientos obsesivos son la leña que alimenta el fuego de la ira, un fuego que sólo podrá extinguirse contemplando las cosas desde un punto de vista diferente

At first the flow of thoughts rushes like a waterfall, which sometimes discourages beginners, who feel their mind is out of control. Actually, the sense of a torrent of thoughts seems to be due to paying close attention to our natural state, which Asian cultures dub "monkey mind," for its wildly frenetic randomness.

la raíz de la cólera se asienta en la vertiente beligerante de la respuesta de lucha-o-huida

Cualquiera puede enfadarse, eso es algo muy sencillo. Pero enfadarse con la persona adecuada, en el grado exacto, en el momento oportuno, con el propósito justo y del modo correcto, eso, ciertamente, no resulta tan sencillo. Aristóteles, Ética a Nicómaco.

For the Stoics, one key was seeing that our feelings about life's events, not those events themselves, determine our happiness; we find equanimity by distinguishing what we can control in life from what we cannot.

passions overwhelm reason time and again.

el descontrol emocional obstaculiza la labor del intelecto

Benjamin Franklin put it well: "Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one." There

Instead of being swept away by that stream we can pause and see that these are just thoughts - and choose whether or not to act on them.