control

Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige; dissidence carries personal costs that may be severe, even in a society that lacks such means of control as deathsquads, psychiatric prisons, or extermination camps. The very structure of the media is designed to induce conformity to established doctrine. In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem.

Soon it would be his turn. Kaine wondered how he would meet Death. His ship was a mess, in every sense of the word. Systems were in disarray, damaged equipment malfunctioning, and control panels shattered by blaster-fire littered the decks. In the fighting, severe hull damage had caused parts of the ship to be sealed off. Dead bodies _ or raw red chunks of them _ lay everywhere. The corridors were dark where the lights had failed. His footsteps echoed eerily as he ran down them. He__ been on the run for what felt like days. He felt naked, his tattered, sweat-drenched tunic clinging to his body, especially under his breastplate. Fatigue had caused him to discard his body amour. It was of no realistic use anyway, and just made him hotter and sweatier, made stealthy movement more difficult _ and weighed him down.

So it came to this, that_ against the grain, no doubt__he condemned man had to hope the apparatus was in good working order! This, I thought, was a flaw in the system; and, on the face of it, my view was sound enough. On the other hand, I had to admit it proved the efficiency of the system. It came to this; the man under sentence was obliged to collaborate mentally, it was in his interest that all should go off without a hitch.

Have I ever said that Turner once actually had himself lashed to the mast of a ship, to be able to later do a painting of a storm? Which has never failed to remind me of the scene in which Odysseus does the identical thing, of course, so that he can listen to the Sirens singing but will stay put.

There are those whose primary ability is to spin wheels of manipulation. It is their second skin and without these spinning wheels, they simply do not know how to function. They are like toys on wheels of manipulation and control. If you remove one of the wheels, they'll never be able to feel secure, be whole.

CONTROL MYSELF?!! I'm a MONSTER! Monsters don't control themselves! That's the whole IDEA!

Sometimes people feel they need to control everything, as if they could! Matters of life and death are out of your hands. The more you come to realize this, the harder you try to prove that you can control SOMETHING, anything. All you can really control is your response to what happens. You cannot control matters of life or death and because of this you are not accountable. You cannot be held liable for anything that you have no power over. Guilt, shame and blame make no sense when circumstances are beyond your control.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....

When men set out to create order, they create only misery.

But love doesn__ control, and I suppose that__ why it__ the ultimate risk. In the end, we have to hope the person we__e giving our heart to won__ break it, and be willing to forgive them when they do, even as they will forgive us. Real love stories don__ have dictators, they have participants. Love is an ever-changing, complicated, choose-your-own adventure narrative that offers the world but guarantees nothing. When you climb a mountain or sail an ocean, you__e rewarded for staying in control. Perhaps that__ another reason true intimacy is so frightening. It__ the one thing we all want, and must give up control to get.

I don't like taking from anyone. I'd rather be a giver, though not for any worthy reason. It's about control, obviously. If I give, I control; if I take, I am controlled. If someone offers me something for free I am at once suspicious.

Sometimes I think the greatest things God teaches us are only found when we realize that we were never in control in the first place. I think your need to control things is just your fear of the unknown. Don__ miss out on the blessings He has for you just because you__e scared.

The Christian who is truly intimate with Jesus will never draw attention to himself but will only show the evidence of a life where Jesus is completely in control.

We say we long for intimacy with God and others, and yet we structure our lives so that this becomes impossible. One might think we are avoiding intimacy, that maybe we really like our finely managed lives just the way they are.

She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge.

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.

There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze that each individual under its weight will end by [internalising] to the point that they are their own overseer, each individual thus exercising surveillance over, and against themself.

I came to realize that good and evil were out of my reach, that time was the only thing I had any control over. I could buy time, create intervals. I could not truly make the world a better place, but I could make part of it a better place for a short while.