Quotes About Control

Power was like a magnet, keeping everything rigid and straight and proper. But without the magnet, it all collapsed into disorganized scrap.

He laughed at that, which was good. I needed him to understand who was in charge, but didn't want to beat him down too hard. His goodwill, his naïve sense of fairness, was a potential asset, and not something to toss away needlessly.

Caligula ne demiÅŸti? Oderint dum meduant. Bizden korktuklar? sürece, b?rak?n bizden nefret etsinler.

Naomi, you think this is all an accident? It's a science. There are people out there who are experts at getting others to do tomorrow what was unthinkable today.

Why did bad things, things she had no control over, make her unable to enjoy good things?

You have to remember, the history the powers-that-be feed you always excludes what they managed to bury. Or whom.

there are no bad guys, any more than there are good guys. There are only smart people, and stupid ones; puppets, and puppet masters

You're just like the politicians, Alex. You want something done but you won't let people do it right. You think you can pick up a turd from the clean end? It doesn't work that way.

You start slow. You find the subject's limits and get him to spend some time there. He gets used to it. Before long, the limits have moved. You never take him more than a centimeter beyond. You make it feel it's his choice.

Ultimately, all executions are political. Their exercise is arbitrary, often capricious, and irrevocable.

The fifth principle [of Arne Naess's principles of deep ecology] states that the flourishing of both human and non-human life requires a substantial decrease of human population. As I said, we are a plague, and our population is out of control. And we don't want to die.

Consider Science Fiction, since its formal inception as a romantic subgenre in this country in 1926 with the publication of the first issues of Hugo Gernsbeck's Amazing Stories has been known for its simple and melodramatic plots which demonstrates man's mastery (or later on loss of control of technology

According to a survey conducted by Yankelovich Partners, a majority of people want more control over the details of their lives, but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives. There you have it—the paradox of our times.

If you shatter the fish bowl so that everything is possible you don't have freedom you have paralysis. Everybody needs a fishbowl.

The more we are allowed to be the masters of our fates, the more we expect ourselves to be.

it is not dancing toy animals that are an endless source of delight for infants, but rather having control.

FIRST, I THINK INCREASES IN EXPERIENCED CONTROL OVER THE YEARS have been accompanied, stride for stride, by increases in expectations about control. The more we are allowed to be the masters of our fates, the more we expect ourselves to be.

The key fact about psychological life in societies in which you have little control over these aspects of life is that you also have little expectation of control. And because of this, I think, lack of control does not lead to feelings of helplessness and depression.

The lesson here is that high expectations can be counter-productive. We probably can do more to affect the quality of our lives by controlling our expectations than we can by doing virtually anything else. The blessing of modest expectations is that they leave room for many experiences to be a pleasant surprise, a hedonic plus. The challenge is to find a way to keep expectations modest, even as actual experiences keep getting better.

The fact that counterfactual thinking seems to hone in on the controllable aspects of a situation only increases the chances that a person will experience regret when engaging in counterfactual thinking.

Seligman's discovery of learned helplessness has had a monumental impact in many different areas of psychology. Hundreds of studies leave no doubt that we can learn that we don't have control.

drink alcoholic beverages ("Be ye not drunk with wine

If you get fired from your job, that's outside your control, so you shouldn't be personally invested in your job.

And the side that knew how to utilize power was the side that won.