“Modern life is, for most of us, a kind of serfdom to mortgage, job and the constant assault to consume. Although we have more time and money than ever before, most of us have little sense of control over our own lives. It is all connected to the apathy that means fewer and fewer people vote. Politicians don’t listen to us anyway. Big business has all the power; religious extremism all the fear. But in the garden or allotment we are king or queen. It is our piece of outdoors that lays a real stake to the planet.”
“Now, you and I both know that if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything.”
“Behind the facade of elected government are a bunch of corporate controlled gangsters running the country.”
“It is regarded as axiomatic that parents have more power then children. This is an inescapable biological fact; young children are completely dependent on their parents or other caring adults for survival.”
“Was it cruel if someone asked for it? Begged for it, even? She always begged. Even now, I could hear her whimpering for me. Christ, those noises she made. A one-way ticket to heaven.”
“The last five years had been a series of carefully orchestrated events. Every move, every strategy had been poured over in painstaking detail before it was set into motion. Pieces on a chess board. A collision of fate and circumstance. I’d planned for every hitch. Every contingency. Except the one that blindsided me like a vat of acid to the face. I fell in love with her.”
“I don t want to have these burdens. But I can t bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.”
“Control or be controlled are the choices that will make life different.”
“I overheard a young man once saying to his wife, I can t control you. That s the problem and it s been the problem ever since day one! And then I heard her answer him and heard her terrible voice. No! she said. The problem isn t that you can t control me, the problem is that you re trying to. Why don t you stop worrying about controlling me and start worrying about controlling yourself?”
“La humanidad ha perdido todo control sobre su futuro -No lo ha tenido jamás, en realidad.Estuvo siempre a merced de unas fuerzas económicas y sociológicas que no entendía, de los caprichos del clima y de los azares de la guerra.”
“Controlling others is the cornerstone of dysfunctional families.”
“And history teaches this iron law of revolutions: the more extensive the eradication of existing authority, the more its successors must rely on naked power to establish themselves. For,in the end,legitimacy involves an acceptance of authority without compulsion; its absence turns every contest into a test of strength.”
“She was one of those languid women, made of dark honey, smooth and sweet, and terribly sticky, who take control of a room with a syrupy gesture, a toss of the hair, a single slow whiplash of the eyes — and all the while remain as still as the centre of a hurricane, apparently unaware of the force of gravity by which they irresistibly attract themselves the yearnings and the souls of both men and women.”
“Fighting is found everywhere in the animal kingdom and nowhere so much as among human animals. Animals fight to get what they want--food, sex, territory, control, etc.--because there are other animals who want the same thing or who want to stop them from getting it. The same is true of human animals, except that we have developed more sophisticated techniques for getting our way. Being rational animals, we have institutionalized our fighting in a number of ways, one of them being war. Even though we have over the ages institutionalized physical conflict and have employed many of our finest minds to develop more effective means of carrying it out, its basic structure remains essentially unchanged. In fights between brute animals, scientists have observed the practices of issuing challenges for the sake of intimidation, of establishing and defending territory, attacking, defending, counterattacking, retreating, and surrendering. Human fighting involves the same practices. Part of being a rational animal, however, involves getting what you want without subjecting yourself to the dangers of actual physical conflict. As a result, we humans have evolved the social institution of verbal argument. We have arguments all the time in order to try to get what we want, and sometimes these degenerate into physical violence.”
“Are you in control of your life, or are circumstances in control of you.”
“Be in control of your life, don’t let circumstances come to control you.”
“By being in harmony with your environment you are able to control more precisely what happens.”