Quotes about Control

Both Marty and Smalls knew that in politics, like religion, power lay in certainty—and that one man's certainty always threatened another's.

Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down. - Mrs. Brown

Can one who hates right govern?" Job 34:13

The policy of our nation is made in cities, controlled largely by urban voters who aren't well informed about the changes on the face of our land, and the men and women who work it.

We're responsible for our own lives.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Anytime we think the problem is "out there," that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us.

A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People become reinforced in the paradigm that they are determined, and they produce evidence to support the belief. They feel increasingly victimized and out of control, not in charge of their life or their destiny. They blame outside forces—other people, circumstances, even the stars—for their own situation.

For those filled with regret, perhaps the most needful exercise of proactivity is to realize that past mistakes are also out there in the Circle of Concern. We can't recall them, we can't undo them, we can't control the consequences that came as a result.

Humans have between what happens to us and our response to it.

You have control over three things: what you think, what you say, and how you behave. To make a change in your life, you must recognize these gifts are the most powerful tools you possess in shaping the form of your life. —SONYA FRIEDMAN

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.