Quotes about Control

Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.

the best and most cost-effective way to control women for reproductive and other purposes was through women themselves.

She's just jealous, people say, as if jealousy is something minor. But it's not, it's the worst, it's the worst feeling there is—incoherent and confused and shameful, and at the same time self-righteous and focused and hard as glass, like the view through a telescope. A feeling of total concentration, but total powerlessness. Which must be why it inspires so much murder: killing is the ultimate control.

While I read, the Commander sits and watches me doing it, without speaking but also without taking his eyes off me. This watching is a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, as used to be said; though in present day, the idea of God laughing is next door to blasphemy. An ultra-serious fellow, God is now.

I wanted to ask why it had to be like this, but I already knew the answer: because it was God's plan. That was how the Aunts got out of everything

What were prizes but one more level of control imposed on Art by the establishment?

Men are sex machines, said Aunt Lydia, and not much more. They only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good. Lead them around by the nose; that is a metaphor. It's nature's way. It's God's device. It's the way things are.

Remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.

As for the adverse publicity, they could squelch it at source, since the media Corps controlled what was news and what wasn't. And the Internet was such a jumble of false and true factoids that no one believed what was on it any more, or else they believed all of it, which amounted to the same thing.

The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about have been done before, more than once.

If the average person realized the power he wields over his life and destiny, he would live in a perpetual state of wonder and thanksgiving.