Quotes about control
page 15

Enoch Powell photo

“The Bill … does manifest some of the major consequences. It shows first that it is an inherent consequence of accession to the Treaty of Rome that this House and Parliament will lose their legislative supremacy. It will no longer be true that law in this country is made only by or with the authority of Parliament… The second consequence … is that this House loses its exclusive control—upon which its power and authority has been built over the centuries—over taxation and expenditure. In future, if we become part of the Community, moneys received in taxation from the citizens of this country will be spent otherwise than upon a vote of this House and without the opportunity … to debate grievance and to call for an account of the way in which those moneys are to be spent. For the first time for centuries it will be true to say that the people of this country are not taxed only upon the authority of the House of Commons. The third consequence which is manifest on the face of the Bill, in Clause 3 among other places, is that the judicial independence of this country has to be given up. In future, if we join the Community, the citizens of this country will not only be subject to laws made elsewhere but the applicability of those laws to them will be adjudicated upon elsewhere; and the law made elsewhere and the adjudication elsewhere will override the law which is made here and the decisions of the courts of this realm.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1972/feb/17/european-communities-bill in the House of Commons (17 February 1972) on the Second Reading of the European Communities Bill
1970s

George Lucas photo
Miguel de Cervantes photo
Alan Greenspan photo

“Intensive research in recent years into the sources of economic growth among both developing and developed nations generally point to a number of important factors: the state of knowledge and skill of a population; the degree of control over indigenous natural resources; the quality of a country's legal system, particularly a strong commitment to a rule of law and protection of property rights; and yes, the extent of a country's openness to trade with the rest of the world. For the United States, arguably the most important factor is the type of rule of law under which economic activity takes place. When asked abroad why the United States has become the most prosperous large economy in the world, I respond, with only mild exaggeration, that our forefathers wrote a constitution and set in motion a system of laws that protects individual rights, especially the right to own property. Nonetheless, the degree of state protection is sometimes in dispute. But by and large, secure property rights are almost universally accepted by Americans as a critical pillar of our economy. While the right of property in the abstract is generally uncontested in all societies embracing democratic market capitalism, different degrees of property protection do apparently foster different economic incentives and outcomes.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Alan Greenspan (2004) The critical role of education in the nation's economy.
2000s

Aneurin Bevan photo
Alexandra Kollontai photo
Brian W. Kernighan photo

“Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.”

Brian W. Kernighan (1942) Canadian computer scientist

Software Tools (1976), p. 319 (with P. J. Plauger).

Tim Aker photo
Mark Manson photo

“Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable.
Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate and controllable.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 4, “The Value of Suffering” (p. 86)

Jeffrey Tucker photo
Chuck Klosterman photo

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person who you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real--but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

Joe Biden photo

“When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it." Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Biden-Palin Vice Presidential debates http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/debates/transcripts/vice-presidential-debate.html, October 2, 2008
2000s

John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Hamas hides among unwitting civilians, who have no way of controlling its activities. This fact does not give Israel the right to kill innocent non-combatants, not even unintentionally. Besides, murder is not 'unintentional' when you know it is inevitable.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Standing Armies Commandeered by Cowards,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=686 WorldNetDaily.com, November 23, 2012.
2010s, 2012

Colin Wilson photo
Ted Malloch photo

“Discipline is the virtue that begins in obedience and flowers in self-control.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 32.

Chuck Palahniuk photo
Norman Tebbit photo
Haruo Nakajima photo
José Martí photo
Timothy Ferriss photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Joseph Heller photo
Matt Hughes photo
Charles Sanders Peirce photo
Jane Roberts photo
Robert Mugabe photo
Eugene Rotberg photo
Howie Rose photo

“Streit, Okposo, Tavares, Moulson and Hunter… Hunter for Moulson, it hopped over his stick, Moulson got it back, couldn't control, then THEY SCORE! It's Tavares! John Tavares picked up the loose puck, and fires home his first National Hockey League goal! A power play goal, and the Islanders lead it 2 to 1! How about THAT for fast hands?”

Howie Rose (1954) American sports announcer

October 3, 2009 - Pittsburgh Penguins at New York Islanders, the season and home-ice opener for the Islanders, and the debut of the Isles' first overall draft pick in the 2009 NHL Draft, John Tavares. Mark Eaton of the defending Stanley Cup Champion Penguins was penalized 2 minutes for hooking. Rose set up this 2nd period power play for the Isles.
2009

George Holmes Howison photo

“Mathematics is that form of intelligence in which we bring the objects of the phenomenal world under the control of the conception of quantity. [Provisional definition. ]”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

"The Departments of Mathematics, and their Mutual Relations," Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 5, p. 164. Reported in Moritz (1914)
Journals

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 504, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: Everything that emancipates the spirit without giving us control over ourselves is harmful.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“Masculine process has at its foundation externalization. The young boy is focused away from his inner and personal self and into achievement, performance, competition, success, emotional control (being "cool"), autonomy (not being dependent or needy), fearlessness, action, and an ethic that only values time spent in doing. Anything else is suspect and viewed as lazy, worthless, time-wasting, or meaningless.Externalization, or the process of being pushed outside of oneself, amplifies and eventually becomes disconnection. Personal relationships are then objectified and founded on the role another can play in his life. Relationships are based on doing and are therefore fairly readily interchangeable with anyone else who can do.Disconnection leads men to the experience of being loners, where it's "lonely at the top," and freedom, space, and "doing one's thing," are the rationalized values. Disconnection transforms a man into someone who has everything he wanted externally, but has nothing that is bonded or connected on a personal level. He is "out of touch," so he doesn't know why he's unhappy, and may conclude that the cause of his malaise is that he needs "more." He sets out to get it, but when he gets it he feels deader and more isolated than ever.The end stage of this journey of masculine process is personal oblivion, which can occur early in his life or may not appear full blown until he's an older man, depending on how extreme his externalized process is. At this point, personal connection becomes impossible. He doesn't know he rationalizes his personal emptiness with cynical philosophies and escapes painful awareness through non-relationships he can control by buying. In the end state of oblivion, he is beyond personal reach and can only relate in abstract, depersonalized, intellectualized ways. The only way he is "loved" is in return for providing or taking care of others.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, pp. 10–11
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Barry Goldwater photo
Walter A. Shewhart photo
Henri Lefebvre photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Robert P. George photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Darius I of Persia photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“He resolved not to speak again until he had controlled his temper.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 3, "Hort Town"

Stephen Fry photo
Harold Pinter photo
Stokely Carmichael photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
Abdullah Öcalan photo
Henry Kissinger photo

“If you mean by "military victory" an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Commenting on the Iraq War in a BBC interview of 19 November 2006, as quoted in "Kissinger: Iraq military win impossible" by Tariq Panja, Associated Press, at Yahoo! News (20 November 2006) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061120/ap_on_re_mi_ea/britain_iraq_kissinger
2000s

Joseph Massad photo
Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji photo
Paul Krugman photo
Alex Jones photo

“If I'm in, you know, especially in a poor area, and I see guys walking like they're thugs down the street, I don't care what color they are, I go "That guy looks like they're a thug, and looks like they're tough, okay… If they try to shake me down I'm gonna ignore them and keep walking, and if they come up to me and try to put a hand on me, I'm gonna punch 'em right in the throat. 'Cause I don't wanna jump on top on of 'em and hurt my knees and stuff, when I slam their head in the ground. Plus, I don't wanna kill 'em. 'Cause then I'd have to go to jail and stuff, and they'd have to find that it was done in self defense. Been down that road." So, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, "Alright. I'm gonna punch this guy in the throat." I'm thinking how hard am I gonna punch him. And I'm not thinking he's a black guy. I'm thinking the guy's walking like a thug, thinks they're tough, and I'm thinking about how I'm going to defend myself. Just like when I've been at the Coast, a few years ago, and walk out of a restaurant in South Padre and they're having a biker rally—and it wasn't like a nice biker rally, most rallies are nice people—it was like thug wannabes, rode up with a motorcycle…and were looking at me, and I was thinking "Okay. Alright. That guy is taking his helmet off. I'm gonna punch him in the throat the minute he tries to get up and do something, and then I'm gonna assault those next three guys. Then they'll probably pull a weapon. I need to take that." I mean, that's what I'm thinking whenever something like that is going on. I can't help it. I'm thinking, "Alright, I'm ready to kill." That's just how I am. And I'm thinking, "Alright. Okay. Instantly assess these guys. These are probably ex-con, real criminals. I've got my three kids here. That gives me, you know, just turbo dinosaur power. And I'm thinking, "Control yourself. Don't have a fight, unless you absolutely got to."”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

You know, the man in me is ready to take all on! and... you know what I'm talking about, don't you? ARGH, you scum! I hate gang members and filth! And it has nothing to do with black people. But I will stump your head in if you start a fight with me, you thug scum! Anyways, excuse me ladies and gentlemen.
"Alex Jones Self-Defense Rant" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIMJ_pxy2eU, July 2013.
2013

Ellen Willis photo
Vernon L. Smith photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.”

"Psychological Observations"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism

Grady Booch photo
Edward O. Wilson photo
Henry R. Towne photo
Trinny Woodall photo

“You have got to stop seeing yourself as a victim, take control and take responsibility.”

Trinny Woodall (1964) English fashion advisor and designer, television presenter and author

Retail therapists (2007)

Heather Brooke photo
Neal D. Barnard photo
Peter Greenaway photo

“Cinema is dead. I can give you a date - it died on the 31st of September, 1983, when the zapper or the remote control was introduced to the livings rooms of the world. Bang! That's the end.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

NoTV Interview with Peter Greenaway on VJ-ing http://www.petergreenaway.info/content/view/125/68/
Interviews

Thomas Szasz photo

“The misleading character of the accident theory is evident from the fact that even now the “error” involved from the standpoint of U. S. policy-makers and American leaders generally is neither one of purpose nor method – it is strictly a case of unexpectedly large expense. For the U. S. leadership, in other words, Vietnam is simply another, painfully large “cost over-run.” In terms of basic U. S. objectives and methods employed, in the Third World – essentially establishment of reliable client states, increasingly managed by military elites, with generous financial and military support (arms, advisors, Green Berets, and more extensive military intervention when junta control is threatened, as in Santo Domingo) – Vietnam is a facet of a completely rational policy. The policy may be vicious and catastrophic, from the perspective of the Vietnamese; and it may be a sordid and disruptive waste of human and material resources from the standpoint of the real interests of the ordinary American; but to the Rostows, Westmorelands and Nixons, the Vietnam War is a noble endeavor (“one of our finest moments”) that we cannot afford to abandon without achieving our original ends. The evidence is compelling that this leadership is entirely capable of destroying every village in Vietnam (and in the process, every Vietnamese) if this is required to attain the original political objectives.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, pp. 87-88.

Ellen Willis photo
Tila Tequila photo
Camille Paglia photo

“The Fairie Queene makes cinema out of the west's primary principle: to see is to know; to know is to control. The Spenserian eye cuts, wounds, rapes.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 173

George Holmes Howison photo

“For genuine omniscience and omnipotence are only to be realised in the control of free beings, and in inducing the divine image in them by moral influences instead of metaphysical and physical agencies: that is, by final instead of efficient causation.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.65

Robert M. Pirsig photo
Rush Limbaugh photo

“You've got enough in here that people who get hold of this — like AP or any of the state-controlled media — they're going to focus on the soap opera aspects of your book and they're going to ignore what is truly one of the most substantive policy books I've read.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

On Sarah Palin's Going Rogue: An American Life, The Rush Limbaugh Show, November 20, 2009 http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911130014

John Desmond Bernal photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Albert Pike photo
Alison Bechdel photo
Ben Carson photo

“You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery, and it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Ben Carson: Obamacare worst thing ‘since slavery’" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/10/11/ben-carson-obamacare-worst-thing-since-slavery/, Washington Post (October 11, 2013)

John Bright photo

“I have often compared, in my own mind, the people of England with the people of ancient Egypt, and the Foreign Office of this country with the temples of the Egyptians. We are told by those who pass up and down the Nile that on its banks are grand temples with stately statues and massive and lofty columns, statues each one of which would have appeared almost to have exhausted a quarry in its production. You have, further, vast chambers and gloomy passages; and some innermost recess, some holy of holies, in which, when you arrive at it, you find some loathsome reptile which a nation reverenced and revered, and bowed itself down to worship. In our Foreign Office we have no massive columns; we have no statues; but we have a mystery as profound; and in the innermost recesses of it we find some miserable intrigue, in defence of which your fleets are traversing every ocean, your armies are perishing in every clime, and the precious blood of our country's children is squandered as though it had no price. I hope that an improved representation will change all this; that the great portion of our expenditure which is incurred in carrying out the secret and irresponsible doings of our Foreign Office will be placed directly under the free control of a Parliament elected by the great body of the people of the United Kingdom.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Glasgow (December 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 277-278.
1850s

J. R. D. Tata photo
Leszek Kolakowski photo

“I have frequently had men describe the following scenario to me: "If at the beginning of a relationship, I keep the woman at a distance and don't want to get too close, she feels that I am pushing her away and that I am not making a commitment—that I am afraid to be intimate. When I finally let down my guard and try to be intimate and close, when I really make myself vulnerable and give up control, which is uncomfortable for me, then I feel really inadequate. She blames me for things that she never blamed me for when I kept my distance. When I start to get close, that's when I am accused of saying the wrong thing or trying to control her. So I am better off staying at a distance and letting her complain about a lack of intimacy."Stewart, age thirty-six, described it this way: "Maryann was liberated on the surface, but the undertow was very different. I would find out a couple of evenings after I had been with her that she was very angry and I wouldn't even know that I had done something wrong. She would be angry because she said I wasn't really involved enough. I didn't care enough about her. The irony is that the women in my life whom I've made the greatest effort to get close to are the ones who always wind up saying they are angry because I wasn't getting close. When I made no effort to get close and really kept my distance, I never got any complaints. The moment I felt I was really opening myself up to be intimate, that was when I was found to be failing. That is the double bind for me."Another such truth was experienced by Alex. He said, "If you keep the control, the distance, then the woman is kept insecure; and so long as she is insecure about the relationship, she will be less inclined to attack. If she's interested in you, but you keep her at a distance, she will be careful about attacking you. She won't criticize you because she's afraid of you. The moment you cross the barrier and actually start to get committed, you find that she begins to feel that you are inadequate as a partner. You know then and there that you are never going to be able to satisfy her."I found this to be true sexually. At the times when I personally thought I was the most sensitive and the most involved and caring as a lover, I would find out often that I was a failure. At the times when I allowed myself to be totally selfish, without apology and didn't give one thought to what the woman experienced, I never got any complaints. I was never told I was selfish as a lover. In fact, I was often told that I was wonderful."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Why men and women can't talk to each other: the hidden unconscious messages of gender, pp. 39–40
The Inner Male (1987)

Yasunari Kawabata photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry), Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, (March 1948) pp. 68-70
1940s

Ilana Mercer photo

“The problem with managing either a business or a prison by periodic rather than continuous inspection is that the "variables" are likely to be seriously out of control before the discrepancy is noted.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 6, The Viable Governor, p. 146.

Robert M. La Follette Sr. photo
John Steinbeck photo
Colin Wilson photo