Quotes About Control

That to live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery.

One buries treasure in the belief that it will be needed in the future. It is far better to act with charity and goodness. One who controls himself builds up hidden treasure that no thief can steal.

And under my breath I was telling it to hisht and for shame, and if I had known any swearing I would have had that in, too.

What was invented with civilization was the ability of some to deny sensuality to others.

Everything seemed to flood over him then. It was as though he'd been the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, refusing to let the sea of reason in.

He was getting disgusted at this increasing nostalgic preoccupation with the past. It was a weakness, he knew, a weakness he could scarcely afford if he intended to go on. And yet he kept discovering himself drifting into extensive meditation on aspects of the past. It was almost more than he could control, and it was making him furious with himself.

Earth will be monetized until all trees grow in straight lines, three people own all seven continents, and every large organism is bred to be slaughtered.

Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.

Chance was just an order that you hadn't yet perceived.

Nine is the age of great turning. Maybe humanity was a nine-year-old, not yet grown up, not a little kid anymore. Seemingly in control, but always on the verge of rage.

Property and mastery: nothing else counts. Earth will be monetized until all trees grow in straight lines, three people own all seven continents, and every large organism is bred to be slaughtered.

Smartphones are miracles, and they've turned us into gods. But in one simple respect, they're primitive: you can't slam down the receiver.

How reason is just another weapon of control.

What is it within us that gives us this need not just to satisfy basic biological wants, but to extend our wills over things, to objectify them, to make them ours, to manipulate them, to keep them at a psychic distance?

The wrong people have all the rights.

The law is simply human will, written down.

They used to be everywhere, Dad. Before we got to them. We took over everything! We deserve to be alone.

To call any music subversive, to say that a set of pitches and rhythms could pose a threat to real power . . . ludicrous. And yet, from Plato to Pyongyang, that endless need to legislate sounds. To police the harmonic possibilities as if there were no limits to music's threat.

The tens of thousands of fans posting to online forums have more control over what happens next than any of the upper brass.

Time alters what can be owned, and who may do the owning.

auto-suggestion.

Life is a battle between the Maker and His creation.

Apparently God had made life on one planet only, and only one country of that planet's dominant species needed to manage it.

Trouble, like the atmosphere, flows everywhere, in currents beyond the power of humans to predict or control.