Quotes about controller (3230 quotes, page 2)

“They brought out LSD to control people, and what they did was give us freedom.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 179
Context: We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD, by the way. Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn't it? They brought out LSD to control people, and what they did was give us freedom. Sometimes it works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. But it sure as hell performs them. If you look a the government report book on acid, the only ones who jumped out of windows because of it were the ones in the Army. I never knew anybody who jumped out of a window or killed themselves because of it.

People , Freedom

“The only abuse of drugs is the control of drugs by other people.... The only control is self-control.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Harvard Law School Forum (1966)

“The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"The Mindscape of Alan Moore" (2003)
Context: The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.

Truth , World

“Had this act not been done by me, of course it would have been better for me. But circumstances were beyond my control.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

“I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, pefect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

God , Freedom , Intelligence , People

“England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare’s much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control — that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § III
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Family , Silence , Memory , Relation ships

“I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.”

Joaquin Phoenix (1974) American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist

"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).

Baby , Personality , People , Nature

“Conspiracy theories (actually: hypotheses) are comforting, anthropocentric, affirming constructs. They assume that someone runs the world, that someone is in control. The sad truth is that nobody is in control. That's way more terrifying.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

via Twitter https://twitter.com/johannes_mono/status/1250039288517050369

World , Truth , Sadness , Way

“Dawn meet the light,
and the twillight the moon
all are mirages
on labyrinth of mind,
ever since time waking.
Do you think that our existence
makes any difference
to this vast universe?
Did we just happen
or were we meant to happen?
In the universal scheme of things,
we stand nowhere.
We may manage to survive in it,
but we have no control upon it,
except in the little space and time
that we create for ourselves.
We are little possibilities
in the endless probabilities of the universe.”

Alexis Karpouzos book An Ocean of souls

“People who create change, change the future for others. Therefore, if you remain idle, the future will control how you change.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1983

Future , People , Change

“If we do not discipline ourselves, the environment and societal values will do it for us. Control from external forces flourishes when internal discipline from within grows weak.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1999

“One of the most significant management functions is control. Controls are usually directed by organization policies and procedures. They are based on the concept that people should have a thorough understanding of management expectations. And there should be consequences for noncompliance. Penalties for noncompliance are predicated upon the theory, that people will not behave if they have nothing to lose.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1978

Penalty , People , Understanding

“We have spent these last years disciplining anyone who disagrees with our line on divorce, on birth control, on being gay. While our planet was being destroyed, while inequality grew like a cancer. We worried whether it was alright to speak the Mass in Latin, whether girls should be allowed to be altar servers. We built walls around us, and all…”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Source: Movie The Two Popes, Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis

Girl , Birth

“England is no longer controlled by Britons. We are under the invisible Jewish dictatorship — a dictatorship that can be felt in every sphere of life.”

Nesta Helen Webster (1876–1960) British far-right conspiracy theorist and author

Source: Germany and England

Life

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1993 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. As quoted in: Olivia Waxman (August 2, 2018): Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wishes This Case Had Legalized Abortion Instead of Roe v. Wade. In: Time Magazine. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527151841/https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ from [hhttps://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/ the original] on May 27, 2022. As quoted in: Louise Melling (Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty, ACLU) (September 23, 2020): For Justice Ginsburg, Abortion Was About Equality. In: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20220527144342/https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality from the original https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/for-justice-ginsburg-abortion-was-about-equality on May 27, 2022.
1990s

Decision , Life

“I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Variant: I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.

Girl , Night

“Satan can control you if you let outward things determine your security.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“The control center of your life is your attitude.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Life

“Only you can control your future.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Future

“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

People

“Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Love , Feeling , Personality

“If you wish to be happy, Eragon, Think not of what is to come nor of that which you have no control over but rather of the now and that which you are able to change”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Thinking , Change , Happiness

“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Source: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Life

“Life is to be lived, not controlled.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Attitude , Sad , Motivational , Wise

“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.”

Chinua Achebe book Anthills of the Savannah

Source: Anthills of the Savannah

Freedom , Universe

“During our recent Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center, it was reported that between two hundred and three hundred children are sold in Atlanta alone each month! Our city is considered to be one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States, perhaps because we have the busiest airport in the world and because, until recently, the penalty for someone convicted of selling another human being was only a $50 fine. A much heavier penalty of up to twenty years’ imprisonment can be imposed by the federal government, but only if there is proof that the trafficking took place across state lines. An analysis by Atlanta social workers found that 42 percent of the sexual exchanges they investigated were in brothels and hotel rooms in the most affluent areas of the city, while only 9 percent were in the poorer neighborhoods in the vicinity of the airport. Like Kara, they too conclude that the primary culprits are the men who buy sexual favors and the male pimps and brothel owners who control the women and garner most of the financial gains.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Women , Men , Children , World

“Wait until next time," he warned. "I'll do things that'll make you lose control within seconds.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Variant: Next time I will do things to you that will make you lose controll in seconds"
-Dimitri.
Source: Last Sacrifice

Time , Waiting

“Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

People , Way , Thinking

“We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.”

Matthieu Ricard (1946) French writer and Buddhist monk

Source: Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

Peaceful , World

“No, you can't deny women their basic rights and pretend it's about your 'religious freedom'. If you don't like birth control, don't use it. Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Women , Birth , Freedom

“I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

“Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

World

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

“I gave him my hard stare. “You're a control freak and I fight all authority. And you want us to mate?”
A wicked spark lit his eyes. “Many, many times.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Time , Fight

“The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Way

“One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Heart

“Somethings in life are out of your control. you can make it a party or a tragedy. Or, you could refuse to take the next step. You could refuse to take what you wanted most because you're afraid some day you might lose it.”

Nora Roberts Vision in White

Source: Vision in White

Life

“Jesus tells us to keep our eyes open so we are not fooled by the signs indicating that the End Times are near. As we get closer to the End Times, many people are going to claim to be the Messiah and claim to have the answers for a troubled world. Additionally, the book of Revelation tells us to expect a period of ceaseless, unending, terrible war. It appears that we are already preparing for this time as fifty percent of all research scientists today are involved in arms development and there is at least one military weapon and four thousand pounds of explosives for every man, woman, and child on earth. Finally, there will be more and more disease and devastation. Today, as you read this, millions of people in the world are being afflicted by insufficient food, the spread of new diseases, and the devastating effects of natural disasters. As we get closer to the End Times, there will be more and more famine. There will also be an increase in earthquakes and natural disasters. Christ also spoke of pestilence: the spread of new diseases. Our world will experience a spate of tragic new diseases that we will be unable to control.”

David Jeremiah

Source: The Prophecy Answer Book

War , People , Books , World

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Freedom

“More than any other nation, the United States has been almost constantly involved in armed conflict and, through military alliances, has used war as a means of resolving international and local disputes. Since the birth of the United Nations, we have seen American forces involved in combat in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Korea, Kosovo, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, Somalia, and Vietnam, and more recently with lethal attacks in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other sovereign nations. There were no “boots on the ground” in some of these countries; instead we have used high-altitude bombers or remote-control drones. In these cases we rarely acknowledge the tremendous loss of life and prolonged suffering among people in the combat zones, even after our involvement in the conflict is ended.”

Jimmy Carter book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

Life , War , People , Birth

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. —Maya Angelou”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Rising Strong

For women , Hope , Peaceful , Angels

“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

“Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them… you could use them, you could change them.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

World , Study , Change

“Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

Way , Failure , Understanding , Learning

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Thalia demanded.
Zoe glared at her. “I cannot control traffic.”
You both sound like my mother,” I said.
Shut up!” they both said in union.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“No” is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Personality

“Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Deep , love , Relationship , Cute

“Life does not control you. What you believe about it, does.”

Alan Cohen

Life

“The use of self control is like the use of brakes on train. It is useful when you find yourself in wrong direction but merely harmful when the direction is right”

Bertrand Russell book Marriage and Morals

Source: Marriage and Morals

Training

“Idiots must stop claiming that atheism is a religion. Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power. And atheism is… precisely not that. Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Religion , Sex

“Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

Secret , Suffering

“if you don't have peace, it isn't because someone took it from you; you gave it away. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: Be a People Person

Peace

“To succeed in the game of power, you have to master your emotions. But even if you succeed in gaining such self-control, you can never control the temperamental dispositions of those around you. And this presents a great danger.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Game

“Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you--you should control them.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories

Dreams , Past , Future

“I really had no control over my cat. Hell, who actually had control over any cat?”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Cats , Hell

“A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

Intelligence

“A nation that can't control its energy sources can't control its future.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Future

“In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Nature

“Some things in life are out of your control. You can make it a party or a tragedy.”

Nora Roberts Vision in White

Source: Vision in White

Life

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man

Wise , Deep , Inspirational , Life

“Let no man, in whatever rank or superiority, control your mind and tell you what to do”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

“He prays because he knows he doesn't control it. He's at the mercy of it.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

“The four lesser apocalyptical horsemen of Panic, Bewilderment, Ignorance, and Shouting took control of the room”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Source: Humboldt's Gift

Death , Season

“If you don't control your temper, your temper will control you.”

Stephen King book Under the Dome

Under the Dome

“It is one of the great ironies of corporate control that the corporate state needs the abilities of intellectuals to maintain power, yet outside of this role it refuses to permit intellectuals to think or function independently.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Source: The Death of the Liberal Class

Thinking

“Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Personality , Happiness

“We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Future

“person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Personality

“I know whom we must fight… it is the Church. For all its history, it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.”

Philip Pullman book The Subtle Knife

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 2 : The Witches
Context: “Sisters,” she began, “let me tell you what is happening, and who it is that we must fight. It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history—and that’s not long by our lives, but it’s many, many of theirs—it’s tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can’t control them, it cuts them out. Some of you have seen what they did at Bolvangar. And that was horrible, but it is not the only such place, not the only such practice. Sisters, you know only the north; I have traveled in the south lands. There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did—not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan’t feel. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, obliterate, destroy every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.

Feeling , History , Nature , Fight

“For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Heart , Personality

“Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

31
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Life

“Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil.”

John Henrik Clarke (1915–1998) American historian and writer

Life , Hell

“Trust is good, control is better.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“I am great admirer of China. It has shown great discipline and dedication in attacking n export markets. China is working furiously on its English-language capability and its quality control. As China become stronger, it sends a clear signal that we in India have to harder to stay ahead.”

N. R. Narayana Murthy (1946) Indian businessman

Source: Entrepreneur of the New Millenium: N.R. Narayana Murthy : Life & Times of N.R. Narayana Murthy, p. 26

“My position and the state will never allow me to become a dictator, but an authoritarian style of rule is characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it. You need to control the country, and the main thing is not to ruin people's lives.”

Alexander Lukashenko (1954) President of Belarus since 20 July 1994

Statement (August 2003), as quoted in BBC - Profile: Alexander Lukashenko (9 January 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3882843.stm.

People , Country

“The answer to crime is not gun control, it is law enforcement and self-control.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Alan Keyes, U.S. Senate debate in Illinois, October 21, 2004. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/media/debates/04_10_21debate2.htm.
2009

Law

“Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we make it our duty to practice them, that, if we are suddenly called upon to perform some action of a different order, it takes us by surprise, and without our supposing for a moment that it might involve the bringing of those very same virtues into play.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919)

“If there is a single assumption which pervades conventional organizational theory, it is that authority is the central, indispensable means of managerial control.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 18 (2006; 24)

“Freedom is the nature of man; every person is self-controlling and himself responsible for his thoughts, his speech, his acts.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (1943)

Nature , Freedom , Personality

“Man’s freedom is lacking if somebody else controls what he needs, for need may result in man’s enslavement of man.”

Muammar Gaddafi book The Green Book

The Green Book (1975)
The Green Book (1975)

Freedom

“During my most recently controlled near-death experience, I got to interview William Shakespeare. We did not hit it off. He said the dialect I spoke was the ugliest English he had ever heard, “fit to split the ears of groundlings.””

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

He asked if it had a name, and I said “Indianapolis.”
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

Death

““You finally fell in love, I see,” said Salo.
“Only an Earthling year ago,” said Constant. “It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Epilogue “Reunion with Stony” (p. 313)
The Sirens of Titan (1959)

Love , Life

“You’re the captain. Get over the helm and start steering. Take control. There’s something going on here you can he a part of. You don’t have to see this thing run up on coral reefs, one time after another after another after another. This one is all yours. You’ve got it. And the clock is running. And it’s going to stop, invariably. But right now, you’re alive. Enjoy. Enjoy this existence. Enjoy this love. It is the deed of incredible compassion that you are here on the face of this earth. You have invested in many things. Maybe won, maybe lost. Maybe it’s time to invest in life because what you invest here will always he yours.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Montreal, Quebec, Canada, March 6, 1988
1980s

Love , Life , Time , Parting

“Management is a distinct process consisting of planning, organising, actuating and controlling; utilising in each both science and art, and followed in order to accomplish pre-determined objectives.”

George R. Terry (1909–1979)

As cited in: S.P. Singh (2003), Planning And Management For Rural Development, p. 8
Principles of Management, 1960
Variant: Management is a distinct process consisting of planning, organizing, actuating and controlling, performed to determine and accomplish the objectives by the use of people and resources.

Art , Science

“Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Inquisition, 1868 The Sword and the Trowel http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/inq.htm

Men , World , Faith , Religion

“Rather in time of war the citizen must be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his government. He must be most watchful of the encroachment of the military upon the civil power. He must beware of those precedents in support of arbitrary action by administrative officials, which excused on the plea of necessity in wartime, become the fixed rule when the necessity has passed and normal conditions have been restored.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

Free Speech in Wartime (October 6, 1917)

War , Support , Time

“Is it not possible that the chimpanzees are responding to some feeling like awe? A feeling generated by the mystery of water; water that seems alive, always rushing past yet never going, always the same yet ever different. Was it perhaps similar feelings of awe that gave rise to the first animistic religions, the worship of the elements and the mysteries of nature over which there was no control? Only when our prehistoric ancestors developed language would it have been possible to discuss such internal feelings and create a shared religion.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Source: Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000), p. 189

Religion , Feeling , Nature , Water

“Our aim is to gain control of the two great treasure houses on which the West depends: The energy treasure house of the Persian Gulf and the minerals treasure house of Central and Southern Africa.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Reported as false in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 9-10. Falsely attributed to Brezhnev as having been said in a secret Warsaw Pact meeting in either 1968 or 1973.
Misattributed

Housing , Dependency

“In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that there was another and perhaps grimmer torture than that of longing and desiring: that of being loved against one's will and of being unable to defend oneself against the urgency of another's passion; of seeing another human being seared by the flame of her desire and of having to look impotently, lacking the power, the capacity, the strength to pluck her from the flames. He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passim, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love , Youth , Lovers , Affliction

“[T]he successes of modern control theory in the design of highly accurate space navigation systems have stimulated its use in the theoretical analyses of economic and biological systems. Similarly, the effectiveness of computer simulation techniques in the macroscopic analyses of physical systems has brought into vogue the use of computer-based econometric models for purposes of forecasting, economic planning, arid management.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Source: 1970s, Outline of a new approach to the analysis of complex systems and decision processes (1973), p. 28

Success

“The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from either.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

"Platform Insincerity" in The Outlook, Vol. 101, No. 13 (27 July 1912), p. 660
1910s

Business

“Who himself cannot control
Why should he o'er others rule?”

Gil Vicente (1456–1536) Portuguese writer

Quem não é senhor de si
Porque o será de ninguém?
Farsa dos Físicos (1512?), tr. Aubrey F. G. Bell

“Marx rejects as “absurd” the contention made by John Stuart Mill, and many of the political economists, that while production is governed by definite laws, distribution is controlled by (malleable) human institutions. Such a view underlies the assumption that classes are merely inequalities in the distribution of income, and therefore that class conflict can be alleviated or even eliminated altogether by the introduction of measures which minimize discrepancies between incomes.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), p. 37.

Law

“I've listened to preachers,
I've listened to fools
I've watched all the dropouts
Who make their own rules
We're pushed and conditioned to rule and control
The media sells it and you live the role”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Crazy Train, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley.
Song lyrics, Blizzard of Ozz (1980)

Fools

“Such an environment of love and affection (at school) had not as yet allowed my life to be exposed to hardships. Depending on others was my habit. You will be surprised to know that prior to my journey to the college I had never bought a train-ticket myself…the very first day I realized that moving out of the controlled school life and stepping into the free college life is no less than inviting all sorts of hassles to yourself. Nobody tells you how to read. Nobody tells you what to do, where to go, when to sleep, and when to wake up. The one who is used to restrictions gets perturbed by this freedom.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Source: Quest for Truth (1999), pp.32-33.

Love , Life , School , Sleep

“You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), pp. 37-8

Parting

“If cybernetics is the science of control, management is the profession of control”

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

Source: Decision and control: the meaning of operational research and management cybernetics, 1966, p. 239 cited in: A. Ghosal (1978) Applied cybernetics: its relevance in operations research. p. 2 and many other sources.

Science

Quotes about controller page 2

Quotes about controller
page 2