Quotes About Control

Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity—precisely the time when you need strength.

What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.

What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness. No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering.

People trying to make a show of their authority are easily deceived by the surrender tactic.

All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely

When you no longer surprise anyone, you give others the impression that they have found you out. Turn the tables: be deliberately unpredictable.

Napoleón: cubrir tu mano de hierro con un guante de terciopelo.

This is the model: Make others dependent on you. To get rid of you might spell disaster, even death, and your master dares not tempt fate by finding out. There are many ways to obtain such a position. Foremost among them is to possess a talent and creative skill that simply cannot be replaced.

We want to imagine ourselves not only as civilized and sophisticated but also as individuals with conscious control of much of what we do. Our group behavior tends to shatter this myth, and historical examples such as the Cultural Revolution frighten us with our own possibilities. We do not like to see ourselves as social animals operating under particular compulsions. It offends our self-opinion as a species.

human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will run

One last warning: Do not imagine that your master's dependence on you will make him love you. In fact, he may resent and fear you. But, as Machiavelli said, it is better to be feared than loved. Fear you can control; love, never.

Impatience, on the other hand, only makes you look weak. It is a principal impediment to power.

In the beginning, strategy indeed belonged to a select few—a general, his staff, the king, a handful of courtiers. Soldiers were not taught strategy, for that would not have helped them on the battlefield. Besides, it was unwise to arm one's soldiers with the kind of practical knowledge that could help them to organize a mutiny or rebellion.

Understand: once people know what pleases you and what angers you, they turn into trained poodles, working to charm you with apparent good behavior.

fear is an emotion we find hard to resist or control

Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies off-balance: Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.

Once you step into a fight that is not of your own choosing, you lose all initiative. The combatants' interests becomes your interests; you become their tool. Learn to control yourself, to restrain your natural tendency to take sides and join the fight. Be friendly and charming to each of the combatants, then step back as they collide. With every battle they grow weaker, while you grow stronger with every battle you avoid.

Monopolies often turn inward and destroy themselves from the internal pressure.

Power depends on the ability to fill a void ...

Image: The Thumbscrew. Your enemy has secrets that he guards, thinks thoughts he will not reveal. But they come out in ways he cannot help. It is there some where, a groove of weakness on his head, at his heart, over his belly. Once you find the groove, put your thumb in it and turn him at will.

If we limit our circle of action, we can give ourselves the illusion of control. The less we attempt, the less chances of failure.

Travel is sold as freedom, but we were about as free as lab rats. This is how they'll manage the next Holocaust, I thought, as I shuffled forward in my stockinged feet: they'll simply issue us with air tickets and we'll do whatever we're told

Power depended on being in the room when the decisions were taken.

Truth was like any other material necessary for the making of war: it had to be beaten and bent and cut into the required shape.