Quotes about controller
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“You forget who submits, Eva,” he said gruffly. “I’ve given up control for you. I’ve bent and adjusted for you. I’ll do anything to keep you and make you happy. But I can’t be tamed or topped. Don’t mistake indulgence for weakness.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Forgetting, Happiness

“Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and see you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you. Then they believe you exist.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

People, World, Personality

“Anyway, it doesn't matter how much, how often, or how closely you keep an eye on things because you can't control it. Sometimes things and people just go. Just like that.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

People

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

“You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.”

Dave Ramsey (1960) American financial advisor

Motivational, Deep, Success, Inspirational

“We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Flying

“That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Source: Stranger than Fiction

Life

“No one controls your destiny. Even at the very worst - there is always choice.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Star

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Wise, Life, Pain, Pleasure

“Do we have free will, or do the mass media and our culture control us, our desires and actions, from the moment we’re born?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

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

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

For women, Happy, Hope, Peaceful

“Doing nothing is opting for the sweetness of stillness… Instead of fighting with that which you cannot control, you might as well just see it through…”

Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) American author and journalist

Source: Radical Sanity: Commonsense Advice for Uncommon Women

Fight

“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”

Robert Conquest (1917–2015) poet and historian from England and the United States

Secret, Behavior

“You'd think the Angel would have been foresighted enough to give us a birth-control rune, but no dice.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Angels, Birth, Thinking

“For women like me, integrity isn't chastity, it isn't fidelity, it isn't any of the old words. Integrity is the orgasm. That is something I haven't any control over.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Source: The Golden Notebook

Women

“I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! I mean they're just shoes… let it go!”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Shoe

“I still cry on waking. I'm not sure why. I feel nothing. Nothing I can name, anyway. It's like breathing - something that happens over which I have no control. (6)”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Feeling, Cry

“I suppose it’s comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse things to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Tell-All

Source: Tell-All

World, Sense

“people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don't, nothing will work out the way they want.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Way, Time

“Very good, Jason Grace," Notus said. "You are a son of Jupiter, yet you have chosen your own path- as all the greatest demigods have done before you. You cannot control your parentage, but youchoose your legacy.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“… no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.”

Milan Kundera book Identity

Source: Identity

Way, Feeling

“If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won't need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers.”

Toni Bentley (1958) Australian writer

Lovers, Idea, Clothes

“Got to lose control before you take control.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

“She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet - physical pain - was the only way to make her internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

Pain, Way

“If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

Life

“Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Way, Knowledge

“Love does not exist, it's like religion, the state wants you to believe in that kind of crap so they can control you, and f**k your head up.”

Irvine Welsh book Trainspotting

Source: Trainspotting

Love, Religion

“Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.”

Philip Yancey (1949) American writer

Source: Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud

Love

“It's only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Source: Be Here Now

Parting

“Not unlike the toaster, I control darkness.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: You Suck

“But love is much like a dam; if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: Love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.

Love, Water

“I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.”

Robin McKinley book Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

Source: Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

Pain, Way, Thinking, Loss

“Mind control won't work on those who are really hardheaded. You know… Creatures like you.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Not a Kerouac quote, but by Allen Ginsberg in his journal of 30 July 1947. Published in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, page 199.
Misattributed

Failure, Passion

“Do people always act this way around you? (Kiara)
You should have seen the reactions when I wore a League uniform. Those were actually comical. Except for the ones who lost control of their bowels. Then it was just messy. (Nykyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

People, Way

“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Life, Art

“Real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It’s a given and that’s the secret.”

Jonathan Carroll book White Apples

Source: White Apples

Love, Secret

“I know what it's like to start something and have it suddenly grow out of control. And you want to get rid of it, because it's hurting you and everyone else around you, but every time you try to do that, it consumes you again.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Time, Hurt

“You cannot control what you love--you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead.”

Graham Greene book The Power and the Glory

Source: The Power and the Glory

Love

“Only a fool worries over what he can’t control.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Fools

“Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

“The person doing the worrying experiences it as a form of love; the person being worried about experiences it as a form of control.”

John Lanchester book Capital

Source: Capital

Love, Personality

“… this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath…”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Source: Caught by the Sea

Life, Beauty, Time, Perfection

“We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

“Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Life, Learning

“If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Variant: Fear again. If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.
Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Feeling

“Witihin seconds the headhunter had lost control of his car and it squealed, sliding sideways right into several other cars.
Cool!' said the Gasman.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Cars

“If they took all the drugs, nicotine, alcohol and caffeine
off the market for six days, they'd have to bring out the
tanks to control you.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Alcohol

“It is not life that's complicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Life

“Nothing is as tedious as the limping days,
When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways,
And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom,
Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Source: Paris Spleen

Fate, Way

“You might have to lose control before you could find out what you'd been missing.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

“I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Courageous, Fear

“Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.

Information is control.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Literature, Learning, Reading

“You can only control your own actions. Not other people’s reactions.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Something Blue

People

“A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Fools, Thinking, Fight

“The brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous system is actually controlled by the brain. Everything. What if you could control it?”

Dennis Lehane book Shutter Island

Source: Shutter Island

Hunger, Pain, Fear, Soul

“That's the thing about human life--there is no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Life, Way, Change

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

As quoted in The Story of Our Money (1946) by Olive Cushing Dwinell, p. 71; this is in an author's note following a quote by Alexander Hamilton. After the author's note there is the sentence "From Writings of Madison, previously quoted. Vol. 2, p. 14". This is apparently an editor's error since the note is clearly Dwinell's. See the talk page for more details.
Misattributed

Money, History

“Well," said Apollo with a brave smile. "You were right, my dear. You had everything under control! Let's go see if we boiled anyone important, shall we?”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Smile

“Politics is the Art of Controlling Your Enviroment.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Art

“I learned that what happened to me did not have to define who I was. My past could not control my future unless I allowed it to.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Living Beyond Your Feelings: Controlling Emotions So They Don't Control You

Learning, Past, Future

“Yeah sure, why not?"i said, making a mental note to get a good look at his wings. For all I knew, they were remote-controlled and duct taped to his back.”
-max”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

“You can't retire to weakness -- you've got to learn to control strength.”

Wallace Stegner book Angle of Repose

Source: Angle of Repose

Learning

“Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”

Daniel H. Pink (1964) American business writer

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: Softmindedness often invades religion. … Softminded persons have revised the Beautitudes to read "Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God." This has led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. … Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

Wisdom, Religion, Knowledge, Science

“Or society places a supreme value on control -- hiding what you feel. Our culture mocks "primitive cultures" and prides itself on supression of natural instincts and impulses.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Feeling, Nature

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Hurtful, Love, Pain, Loss

“You’re only responsible for yourself, Jess. And that’s the only person you can control. Other people will either get it or they won’t but you can’t define yourself by their opinions.”

Susan Mallery (1950) American author

Source: Sweet Trouble

People, Personality

“The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers

Imagination, Thinking

“Finally getting control of myself, I kissed her again, then brought my hand to her face, gently running my fingers over her cheek. I marveled at the softness of her skin, the gentleness I saw in her eyes. Even now she was perfect.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Kiss, Perfection

“People who know other people’s secrets can’t afford to do things that impair their ability to control their mouths.”

Patricia Briggs book Bone Crossed

Source: Bone Crossed

People, Secret

“I wanted to wipe the grin off his face with a fist. I resisted the urge. Who says I have no self-control?”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

“I came to realize that if people could make me angry they could could control me. Why should I give someone else such power over my life?”

Ben Carson book Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Life, People

“There is a way to master silence
Control its curves, inhabit its dark corners
And listen to the hiss of time outside”

Paul Bowles (1910–1999) American composer, writer, translator

Way, Silence, Time

“I didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can't cure it.”

David Sheff (1955) American writer

“… She'd gone past interest, swung into attraction, burst through lust, tripped over affection, and was now skidding out of control into love.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Happy Ever After

Love, Past

“He was very much a man of moods, possibly owing to what is styled the artistic temperment. I have never seen, myself, why the possession of artistic ability should be supposed to excuse a man from a decent exercise of self-control.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Exercises, Mood

“The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985

Way, History

“There are moments in life when it is all turned inside out--what is real becomes unreal, what is unreal becomes tangible, and all your levelheaded efforts to keep a tight ontological control are rendered silly and indulgent.”

Aleksandar Hemon The Lazarus Project

Source: The Lazarus Project

Life, Effort

“I'm really not good with impulse control.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

“The happiness of those who want to be popular depends on others; the happiness of those who seek pleasure fluctuates with moods outside their control; but the happiness of the wise grows out of their own free acts.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Pleasure, Mood, Dependency, Happiness

“there are only so many ways to get rejected or ignored. It doesn't hurt at all anymore because why should someone who's a complete stranger have any control over your sense of selfworth?”

Neil Strauss book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

Source: The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

Way, Sense, Hurt

“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

“The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive, is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", page 101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=114&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image <br class="br">The Descent of Man (1871)

“We all need to have dreams. The question is, does the dream control you or do you control the dream?”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Source: Surprise Endings

Dreams, Question

“Who wants to be a goddess when we can be human? Perfection is a flaw disguised as control.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Perfection

“I'm still prone to periods of isolation, still more fearful of the world out there and more averse to pleasure and risk than I'd like to be; I still direct more energy toward controlling and minimizing appetites than toward indulging them.”

Caroline Knapp (1959–2002) American writer

Source: Appetites: Why Women Want

Pleasure, World, Fear

“Men are intrigued by anything they do not completly control.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Men

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

Albert Ellis (1913–2007) American psychologist

Deep, Courageous, Success, Happy

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

Feeling

“Emotions were like wild horses and it required wisdom to be able to control them”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Wisdom, Horse

“Straight people. Why can't they control themselves?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Alec Lightwood, pg. 533
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

People

“Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

World, Fear

“And loss of control is always the source of fear. It is also, however, always the source of change.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Fear, Change, Loss

“It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”

Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) Social psychologist

As quoted in The Social Dimensions Of Law And Justice In Contemporary India (1979) by V. R. Krishna Iyer
Context: It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. The fact that obedience is often a necessity in human society does not diminish our responsibility as citizens. Rather, it confers on us a special obligation to place in positions of authority those most likely to use it humanely. And people are inventive. The variety of political forms we have seen in history are only several of many possible political arrangements. Perhaps the next step is to invent and to explore political forms that will give conscience a better chance to resist errant authority.