Totalitarian Control Quotes

While science gives us implements to use, science alone does not determine for what ends they will be employed. Radio is an amazing invention. Yet now that it is here, one suspects that Hitler never could have consolidated his totalitarian control over Germany without its use. One never can tell what hands will reach out to lay hold on scientific gifts, or to what employment they will be put. Ever the old barbarian emerges, destructively using the new civilization. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control. ~ B.F. Skinner

What the (totalitarian) government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of the nuisance that people generally won't bother. ~ James M. Fallows

Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder - and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously. They seek to impose a heartless system of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East, and arm themselves with weapons of mass murder ... Their aim is to seize power in Iraq, and use it as a safe haven to launch attacks against America and the world. ~ George W. Bush

I describe what is happening as 'food fascism' because this system can only survive through totalitarian control. With patents on seed, an illegitimate legal system is manipulated to create seed monopolies. Seed laws that require uniformity - which criminalize diversity and the use of open-pollinated seeds - are fascist in nature. Suing farmers after contaminating their crops is another aspect of this fascism. Pseudo-hygiene laws that criminalize local, artisanal food are food fascism. And attacks on scientists and the silencing of independent research are examples of knowledge fascism. ~ Vandana Shiva

You've got to trust people. And because I am a control freak, sometimes that's difficult for me, because I want to micro-manage absolutely everything. I can't hand over. But I'm trying to do that more. ~ Victoria Beckham

Sooner or later a democracy which is to survive has to be able to rely upon that enlargement of vision and purpose of those individuals who compose it, which means that their craving for devotion and self-sacrifice is satisfied in a democratic society on a nobler level, and with a finer recognition of the value of individual personality than is true of a national purpose of a totalitarian state under a dictator. ~ Ordway Tead

The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist. ~ Aasif Mandvi

Fear cannot exist in the presence of faith. Fear only exists because you feel that you are not in control. Give up the need to be in control, take a leap in faith and fear will vanish as the mists in the morning sun. ~ John Harricharan

The sword doesn't change. So you have to adapt to the sword. You can't change your surroundings. They only change once you have changed. ~ Bjørn Aris

One way or another, we spend our whole lives being conditioned into accepting some line or order, some position of domination or subjection. It's hard to unlearn such hierarchy, to undo such control. It's implicit. ~ Cliff James

If you have to dwell on anything, think of noble pure thoughts. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The easiest way to gain control of the population is to carry out acts of terror. The public will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened. ~ Joseph Stalin

Most of the pain we experience, whether we realize it or not, comes from the fantasies we live in.
We create our own worlds, where there are certain rules, things to be done and said and events to happen. And every time that doesn't go according to the plan (which, basically, means anything because we have no control over what might happen and can't predict it), we panic. ~ Lidiya K.

You really can't be a control freak and garden happily. After many years, I have finally allowed my garden to rescue me from rigidity. No longer do I feel compelled to create utter neatness and order in my garden - or in my life. "Organized chaos" is more like it, and I like it more that way. Nor do I have to be constantly moving and doing in my garden - or in my life. Today, I actually can (and do) stay put, seated quietly on a tree stump near the brook or on the front lawn under our now majestic oak. I'm perfectly content to allow my mind to drift and my body to rest. ~ Barbara Pearlman

Today is your day. The day you take control to become the best version of you. ~ Tony Curl

I need to be more under control. I need to calm down a little bit so I can cut down on the little silly errors I get. ~ Delmon Young

That circumstances grow out of thought every man knows who has for any length of time practised self-control and self-purification, for he will have noticed that the alteration in his circumstances has been in exact ratio with his altered mental condition. So ~ James Allen

Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress. ~ Jacob M. Appel

Why, Maddy asked herself lately, had she ever decided to have a baby? She wasn't ready for this, and neither was Peter. Very recently, it seemed, they had been staying up late and having lots of sex, and eating in a variety of cheap restaurants and going to many movies, and once even going to a tiny jewelry store on Avenue A on a Saturday night to have Maddy's nose pierced. Then, on a whim almost as casual as the nose-piercing decision, they had decided to stop using birth-control. She had taken her circular packet of pills one night, put them in an ash-tray, and ceremonially burned them, although the plastic had only curled and smoked and stank up the apartment, leaving the pills themselves intact behind their transparent bubble windows. ~ Meg Wolitzer

Will Trump, who has scant impulse control and who's willing to say the most insulting, provocative things that people wouldn't say at a dinner party much less a global forum, get into a tweet battle with a madman and start a world war? Will Hillary ever seem on the level? Or will she always be surrounded by a cordon of creepy henchmen and Clinton Inc. sycophants, shrouded in a miasma of money grabs and conveniently disappearing records and emails? Both ~ Maureen Dowd

You can't force your mind to stop thinking negative thoughts!...What we are after is not mind control but mind training. ~ John Hargrave

When you give another person the power to define you, then you also give them the power to control you. ~ Leslie Vernick

Typically, images or paintings are designated as anamorphic when, in order for the image to appear, a particular line of sight must be adopted. The image only shows up when approached from the angle dictated to the viewer by the image's own set of conditions. In this sense, the viewer must 're-form' their perspective to match the perspective demanded by the image. We are not free to approach the image as we wish; the image is free to assign us a perspective proper to itself ... Anamorphosis, then, describes the freedom of the phenomenon to give itself as it wishes and it measures the extent to which this freedom turns the tables on the one to whom it appears. To receive a phenomenon as it wishes to give itself is to yield control and suspend our own timetables and preconditions in order to be faithful to the conditions set by what gives itself. ~ Adam Miller

The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same. They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people. ~ Gilbert Highet

I am more and more convinced that some people are put in our lives solely to try our patience and tamper with our tolerance levels. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

But, no, really, I had it this time. One of my first Salon essays was about confronting my debt, which had gotten so out of control I had to borrow money from my parents. That was a low moment, but it came with a boost of integrity. A free tax attorney helped me calculate the amount I owed the IRS - $40,000 - and put me on a payment plan. My commitment was seven years, which made me feel like the guy in Shawshank Redemption, tunneling out of prison with a spoon. ~ Sarah Hepola

If Chomsky says the educational system is an undemocratic system, you can say, well, you're there, you have a position at MIT. Well, it's perfectly attuned to the American system of control, a very sophisticated system of control that allows just enough dissidence so that those in power can point to the fact that the university is democratic but not enough dissidence to create a real danger to the system. ~ Howard Zinn

Identifying with the results is very dangerous, especially for those trying to control the senses or practice celibacy. ~ B.T. Swami

Do not provoke me," I bite out. "I told you not to provoke me." "It's not my fault you can't control your temper," she snaps. Her ~ A. Zavarelli

The so-called "breeding" of the tsar, his ability to control himself in the most extraordinary circumstances, cannot be explained by a mere external training; its essence was an inner indifference, a poverty of spiritual forces, a weakness of the impulses of the will. That mask of indifference which was called breeding in certain circles, was a natural part of Nicholas at birth. The ~ Leon Trotsky

The role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures, and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore, to make them easier for global corporations to control. Global corporations are even now trying to commodify all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention indigenous cultures. ~ Jerry Mander

A perfect life is to observe - to realize that you have no control over the events in your life, that there are no events in your life, that there is no life. ~ Frederick Lenz

God's more in control than we are. Obviously you still take all the precautions and safety measures inside your car. ~ Matt Kenseth

Nothing in the Constitution of the United States gives the Congress or the Executive Branch the power to attempt the task of regulating climate, as impossible as that would be under any realistic scenarios. No national security emergency exists relative to climate that would warrant increased governmental control of energy production. Today's Americans have an obligation to future Americans to elect leaders who do not believe in an omnipotent government but believe, as did the Founders, in limited government, and in the preservation of liberty and the natural rights of the people. ~ Harrison Schmitt

I can't think about whether I'll disappoint Sonic Youth fans. It's not like I want people to be disappointed, but I just can't control that. ~ Kim Gordon

The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant ... has painfully affected the Soviet people, and shocked the international community. For the first time, we confront the real force of nuclear energy, out of control. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

What I try to control ends up controlling me. ~ Susan Jeffers

We cannot choose how many years we will live, but we can choose how much life those years will have. We cannot control the beauty of our face, but we can control the expression on it. We cannot control life's difficult moments but we can choose to make life less difficult. We cannot control the negative atmosphere of the world, but we can control the atmosphere of our minds. Too often we try to choose and control things we cannot. Too seldom we choose to control what we can ... our attitude. ~ John C. Maxwell

But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission. If we wish life to be a system, this may be a nuisance; but if we wish it to be a drama, it is an essential. It may often happen, no doubt, that a drama may be written by somebody else which we like very little. But we should like it still less if the author came before the curtain every hour or so, and forced on us the whole trouble of inventing the next act.

A man has control over many things in his life; he has control over enough things to be the hero of a novel. But if he had control over everything, there would be so much hero that there would be no novel.

And the reason why the lives of the rich are at bottom so tame and uneventful is simply that they can choose the events. They are dull because they are omnipotent. They fail to feel adventures because they can make the adventures. The thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence of these great plain limitations which force all of us to meet the things we do not like or do not expect. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Man is slave of emotions when they arise, and master of them when they don't. ~ Raheel Farooq