Quotes About Control

the human mouth is the gateway to catastrophe.

In that little pocket-size world of his, he was the absolute master.

Is loving someone enough? he wondered. Or is God like Stromboli, making us think we're in control of our fate while turning us all into jackasses?

As soothing as it would be to rip off his arm and beat him with it, it would really slow things down.

It's not a great idea to have the lead on an investigation under the control of a crazy spook. She's armed, for Christ's sake. I'd appreciate a little warning.

At the first gate, the gatekeeper asks, "Is this true?" At the second gate, he asks, "Is it kind?" And at the third gate, "Is it necessary?" If we applied this proverb strictly, most of us would have very little to say. I am not recommending silence, however, but control over our speech.

In themselves, most of these thoughts are not actually harmful; a few of them may even be rather elevating. The trouble is that we have very little control over them. If you ask the thoughts, they would say, "This poor fellow thinks he is thinking us, but we are thinking him.

Don't try to control the future," he would say. "Work on the one thing you can learn to control: your own responses.

Fasting may not be as easy as feasting, but after a while it is not too different. Both are extremes. It is not hard to go the extreme way, but what is really difficult is neither to fast nor to feast, but to be moderate in everything we do.

I have tremendous respect for anyone who can control his palate enough to learn not only to drink beer but to enjoy it too.

Trying to get through life without control over your attention is a little like trying to reach a destination with no control over your car.

The mind is powerful, but it needs something to hold on to so it doesn't wander.

Fate was playing my hand for me and for once in my life I knew better than not to go ahead and let it.

We may not be able to control life's circumstances, but we always have a choice about how we use our minds to respond to them.

One general rule is that when we have no control over stimulation, it is more upsetting, even more so if we feel we are someone's victim.

Anything done to the body will change the mind. We expect this to be the case with drugs specifically designed for that purpose. But we forget that our brain and therefore our thoughts can also be changed by sleep, exercise, nutrition, environment and the state of our sexual hormones, to name a few factors we can often control ourselves. It is equally true that anything done to the mind will also change the body - meditation, telling our troubles to a friend, or even just writing them down.

Have you imagined yourself in Jesse's place? What a confusing situation. The source of your arousal is utterly out of your control. Your intuition tells you that the other, usually so helpful, is now anything but help. Yet the other is laughing, having fun, expecting you to. Here is a reason why you may find it hard even now to know what you do and do not like, separate from what others like to do to you or with you or think you should like.

Spark asks whether men or women are in the driver's seat and whether the power to choose one's destroyer is women's only form of self-assertion.

Almost every woman I have ever met has a secret belief that she is just on the edge of madness, that there is some deep, crazy part within her, that she must be on guard constantly against 'losing control' — of her temper, of her appetite, of her sexuality, of her feelings, of her ambition, of her secret fantasies, of her mind.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you.

Poise is the strength of body and strength of mind to control your Sympathy and your Knowledge. Unless you control your emotions they run over and you stand in the mire.

Most people will be surprised (and horrified) to know that the epigraph for this chapter was taken from a quote found in a 1960 CIA study on brainwashing. The full quote is: "We know now that men can be made to do exactly anything.…It's all a question of finding the right means. If only we take enough trouble and go sufficiently slowly, we can make him kill his aged parents and eat them in a stew."1