Quotes About Control

Discipline, Norah. If you're going to taunt them, remember to stick out your tongue.

Several tons of dynamite are set off in this picture; none of it under the right people.

It's easy these days to buy a nation, but it's quite difficult to take it by force.

Mortmain is an old French word that should be tattooed on the inside of any historical novelist's skull. This wonderful and terrible word means "dead hand." Its definition is: "The influence of the past regarded as controlling the present." (It is also used as a legal term with the same basic meaning.

Only himself manacles man.

Man is always the master, even in his weaker and most abandoned state; but in his weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his household.

Calmness is power.

Mind is the master-power that moulds and makes.

If you can't walk away from a negotiation, then you aren't negotiating. You're just working out the terms of your slavery.

Sometimes, watching a movie is a bit like being raped.

When you can stop you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't...

Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self.

With determination and dice, I am God.

Dealing dreams and destruction to a pattern plagued world.

Gun control means control. It means control for the government and the government starts controlling the people.

The simple people are trash. A herd of sheep that are good for shearing, but sometimes it's more profitable to slaughter them.

Has he ever trapped you in a room and not let you out? Has he ever raised a fist as if he were going to hit you? Has he ever thrown an object that hit you or nearly did? Has he ever held you down or grabbed you to restrain you? Has he ever shoved, poked, or grabbed you? Has he ever threatened to hurt you? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then we can stop wondering whether he'll ever be violent; he already has been.

Physical aggression by a man toward his partner is abuse, even if it happens only once. If he raises a fist; punches a hole in the wall; throws things at you; blocks your way; restrains you; grabs, pushes, or pokes you; or threatens to hurt you, that's physical abuse. He is creating fear and using your need for physical freedom and safety as a way to control you.

The central attitudes driving the Water Torturer are: You are crazy. You fly off the handle over nothing. I can easily convince other people that you're the one who is messed up. As long as I'm calm, you can't call anything I do abusive, no matter how cruel. I know exactly how to get under your skin.

Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.

THE ABUSER'S PROBLEM IS NOT THAT HE RESPONDS INAPPROPRIATELY TO CONFLICT. HIS ABUSIVENESS IS OPERATING PRIOR TO THE CONFLICT: IT USUALLY CREATES THE CONFLICT, AND IT DETERMINES THE SHAPE THE CONFLICT TAKES.

As long as we see abusers as victims, or as out-of-control monsters, they will continue getting away with ruining lives. If we want abusers to change, we will have to require them to give up the luxury of exploitation.

The underlying attitude comes bursting out of his words: He believes his wife is keeping something of his away from him when she doesn't want intimate contact. He sees sexual rights to a woman as akin to mineral rights to land—and he owns them.

The central attitudes driving the Drill Sergeant are: I need to control your every move or you will do it wrong. I know the exact way that everything should be done. You shouldn't have anyone else — or any thing else — in your life besides me. I am going to watch you like a hawk to keep you from developing strength or independence. I love you more than anyone in the world, but you disgust me. (!!)