103 Quotes On Taking Control

In a world that often feels unpredictable and fast-paced, the power to take control of our lives and circumstances can be both empowering and transformative. Whether we seek to manage our emotions, steer the direction of our careers, or navigate personal challenges, the wisdom of others who have successfully taken the reins of their own destinies can serve as a guiding light. In this curated collection of 103 quotes, we delve into the minds of leaders, thinkers, and visionaries who understand the importance of taking control. These quotes are more than just words; they are nuggets of inspiration that encourage introspection and action, reminding us that the ability to shape our futures is within our grasp. Join us on this journey of empowerment, and let these powerful insights inspire you to take charge of your own narrative.

1. “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....” - Noam Chomsky

2. “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind” - Jim Morrison

3. “Do you know we are being led toSlaughters by placid admirals& that fat slow generals are gettingObscene on young bloodDo you know we are ruled by t.v.” - Jim Morrison

4. “Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.” - Robert A. Heinlein

5. “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” - George Orwell

6. “If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.” - Bill Watterson

7. “Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.” - Madeline L'Engle

8. “All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” - Noam Chomsky

9. “Is is true that dictators never dream because they can change their smallest fantasies into realities if they want to?” - Alfred De Musset

10. “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.” - Aleksandar Hemon

11. “I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.” - Kurt Vonnegut

12. “Do not do that again," he said stiffly."Don't kiss me back then," I retorted.He stared at me for what seemed like forever. "I don't give 'Zen lessons' to hear myself talk. I don't give them because you're another student. I'm doing this to teach you control.""You're doing a great job," I said bitterly.” - Richelle Mead

13. “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” - Epictetus

14. “Control is never achieved when sought after directly; it is the surprising result of letting go.” - James Arthur Ray

15. “The best way to navigate through life is to give up all of our controls.” - Gerald G. Jampolsky

16. “The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment. ” - Friedrich Nietzsche

17. “You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” - Steve Maraboli

18. “Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.” - Steve Maraboli

19. “The world can be such a fright, but it belongs to us tonight.” - Craig Ferguson

20. “We sensible often resist intrusive love and its chaos practically, employing measures to prevent the former for fear of the latter. But for all our wit and work, that desperation for control also prevents the pure, transcendental freedom more often delivered by both.” - Tiffany Madison

21. “Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.” - Craig Ferguson

22. “England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.” - George Orwell

23. “The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.” - Wm. Paul Young

24. “those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control” - Wm. Paul Young

25. “Dominance. Control. These things the unjust seek most of all. And so it is the duty of the just to defy dominance and to challenge control.” - Robert Fanney

26. “Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself. ” - james frey

27. “You’ll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you’re still the one in control.” - Jodi Picoult

28. “Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.” - Terence McKenna

29. “Sometimes, we feel conscious but unable to move our body. The first thing to do is focus in a prayer, then start to wink frequently.By this way, slowly but sure our body can be moved totally by our persistent willpower.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

30. “Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. Because if you can't learn to master your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

31. “Always try to be joyful and proactively benign to the people. By doing so everyday, people have no control at all over my mood.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

32. “Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

33. “You can render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, but if you don't keep from Caesar that which is yours, Caesar will take some, and than take some more, and if you don't put a stop to it, though you won't lose everything - you can't lose everything; there's things he can't take, at least one or two - a time will soon come when you'll think you've lost everything, when you'll think all is Caesar's, and by then you'll be too weak to take what's yours back, too tired to remember what was yours to begin with, and you'll end up, perversely, scheming for his leavings and, even more perversely, grateful when you get them.” - Adam Levin

34. “If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also...but of course if you were able to stand soberly after the first slap.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

35. “That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as a dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb.” - Arthur C. Clarke

36. “The reason many people in our society are miserable, sick, and highly stressed is because of an unhealthy attachment to things they have no control over.” - Steve Maraboli

37. “The main obstacle to further progress on the resource curse is China, and to a lesser extent India.” - George Soros

38. “Probably the wisest words that were ever uttered to me. Came from a therapist. I was sitting in her office, crying my eyes out. . . and she said, "So let me get this straight. You base your personal happiness on things entirely out of your control.” - Laura Munson

39. “Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.” - David Richo

40. “It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you.It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.It's not a weakness.It's your best strength.” - Patrick Ness

41. “The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” - Julia Cameron

42. “In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” - James Madison

43. “You learned to run from what you feel, and that's why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control.” - Megan Chance

44. “She felt like a baton getting passed along in a relay race, completely devoid of any control over her destiny.” - Gretchen McNeil

45. “Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician's karmic calamity.” - T.F. Hodge

46. “The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead.” - Jack Weatherford

47. “It may be a man's world, but men are easily controlled by women.” - Ashly Lorenzana

48. “No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.” - Chuck Palahniuk

49. “Showing a lack of self-control is in the same vein granting authority to others: 'Perhaps I need someone else to control me.” - Criss Jami

50. “I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead.” - John Fowles

51. “Today I am in control because I want to be. I have my fingers on the switch, but have lived a lifetime ignoring the control I have over my own world. Today is different.” - A.S. King

52. “Imagine a land where people are afraid of dragons. It is a reasonable fear: dragons possess a number of qualities that make being afraid of them a very commendable response. Things like their terrible size, their ability to spout fire, or to crack boulders into splinters with their massive talons. In fact, the only terrifying quality that dragons do not possess is that of existence.Now, the people of this land know about dragons because their leaders have warned them about them. They tell stories about cruel dragons with razor teeth and fiery breath. They recount legends of dragons hunting by night on silent wings. In short, the leaders make sure that the people believe in all the qualities of dragons, including that key quality of existence. And then they control the people — when they need to — with their fear of dragons. The people pay a dragon-slaying tax … everyone stays indoors after dark to avoid being snatched by swooping claws … and nobody ever strays out of bounds for fear of being eaten well and truly up.Perhaps somebody will wonder if dragons aren’t, after all, fictitious because — despite their size — nobody seems to have actually seen one. And so it is necessary from time to time to provide evidence: a burnt tree or two, a splintered rock, the mysterious absence of a villager. The population is controlled by the dragons in its collective mind. It’s contrived superstition, and it is possible because the people do not know enough about the way the world works to know that dragons do not exist.” - David Whiteland

53. “Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity.” - J. P. Vinluca

54. “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.” - Naomi Wolf

55. “Women only cut their hair in times of crisis... It's somethin' a woman always has the power to do, even when she loses control over everything else. Cuttin' hair is a cry for help.” - Bella Pollen

56. “She looked into Kirsten's eyes and wondered how it is that a soldier fights and a savior suffers, but a woman, in lying down, rules everything.” - Rebecca Coleman

57. “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.” - C. JoyBell C.

58. “Let them see that you trust them & let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions.Do that & they will commit their lives to you. Bully the, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, & after a while you'll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, & stifling their resentment.” - Octavia E. Butler

59. “The truth is that this was something over which I had no control and the question is not why but what. What am I going to do with this? What am I going to make of it?” - Vicki Forman

60. “So when you’re nervous, you count?” “Not just when I’m nervous,” I said. “It’s… all the time. I count the seconds during pauses in conversations. I count the minutes when I’m waiting on something. Sometimes, when I’m kind of panicked or anxious, I count my heartbeats. Something about counting makes me feel like… like I have the power. Like knowing how much time has passed or how many steps I’ve taken from one place to another will somehow keep me in control of the situation.” - Kody Keplinger

61. “So much of control is not authoritative action but mindful waiting.” - Cameron Conaway

62. “he who feeds you, controls you” - Thomas Sankara

63. “The COUNTRY is controlled by LAWS>LAWS are controlled by POLITICIANS>POLITICIANS are controlled by VOTERS>VOTERS are controlled by PUBLIC OPINION>PUBLIC OPINION is controlled by the MEDIA (News, Hollywood, Internet...) & EDUCATIONso. whoever controls MEDIA & EDUCATION, controls the COUNTRY.” - William J Federer

64. “The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.” - H.L. Mencken

65. “Tomorrow will never call to ask your opinion; you don't control it. Stop allowing today's possibilities to be robbed by tomorrow's insecurities.” - Steve Maraboli

66. “No true love is possible, Lewis demonstrates, until we abandon our claims, our rights, our grievances. Until then we will be trapped in the obscurity of our heart's mixed motives, our will to possess, to control, to be our own gods.” - Michael D. O'Brien

67. “I have heard that, with some persons, temperance – that is, moderation – is almost impossible; and if abstinence be an evil (which some have doubted), no one will deny that excess is a greater. Some parents have entirely prohibited their children from tasting intoxicating liquors; but a parent’s authority cannot last for ever; children are naturally prone to hanker after forbidden things; and a child, in such a case, would be likely to have a strong curiosity to taste, and try the effect of what has been so lauded and enjoyed by others, so strictly forbidden to himself – which curiosity would generally be gratified on the first convenient opportunity; and the restraint once broken, serious consequences might ensue.” - Anne Brontë

68. “I would be bored to death if I didn't control a country--Gin” - Shinjo Mayu

69. “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.” - Daniel H. Pink

70. “Woe is the mind of the common man, so easily controlled by the prospect of an ambition never to be truly attained. This is what tyrants live on and by what commoners are blissfully burdened and subdued.” - Evan Meekins

71. “Don't be a creation of circumstances, create your dreams, take full control of your destiny.” - Steven Redhead

72. “You can't change the past, only your perception of it; but you can control the future.” - Steven Redhead

73. “When things run out of control it is because we failed to control how reality plays out. How you manage and control your reality will come to determine your life.” - Steven Redhead

74. “Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” - H. James Harrington

75. “You can't make me do nothing but die!” - richard wright

76. “You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?” - Richard Russo

77. “Let us liberate ourselves from any form of control. Let us focus at the inner drum, where the rhythm aligns with that of our heart. The measure of responsibility, equals to the need for evolution. Just listen, the inner child, let it whisper in your ear.” - Grigoris Deoudis

78. “Kessa began to cut her meat into tiny pieces. As a whole it was unmanageable, frightening; but divided and arranged, the meat could be controlled. She cut four pieces. She'd count to four between each bite.” - Steven Levenkron

79. “It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous -- even death is terrible only if we fear it.” - Epictetus

80. “Damn the way he had control over me.” - Shannon A Thompson

81. “The mind is powerful, and you have more control than you think.” - Scott D. Lewis

82. “Break the character and independence of your man and you will have an obedient trooper.” - Jan Valtin

83. “My sister said Mary Elizabeth is suffering from low self-esteem, but I told her that she said the same thing about Sam back in November when she started dating Craig, and Sam is completely different. Everything can't be low self-esteem, can it? My sister tried to clarify things. She said that by introducing me to all these great things, Mary Elizabeth gained a "superior position" that she wouldn't need if she was confident about herself. She also said that people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don't, nothing will work out the way they want.” - Stephen Chbosky

84. “But sex...that was the opposite of control. There were emotions, and attraction, and that pesky other person that just had to be involved. Not my idea of fun.” - Cora Carmack

85. “The person doing the worrying experiences it as a form of love; the person being worried about experiences it as a form of control.” - John Lanchester

86. “Fortunately, we are not in control.” - Willie Nelson

87. “We have to try to control what we can or else we cannot judge progress.” - Lionel Suggs

88. “The game had to be played the same way every day or the pieces would fall to the floor, the board would collapse, and the illusion that you were shaping your own life, that you were in control, would break.” - Kevin Brockmeier

89. “No, I wanted to say, he didn't cut off her hands because he didn't have to, he had cut them off long before, with years of keeping all authority in his own palms, all the rules and all the power and all the answers emanating from him and no one else. And if you don't understand that, if you've never been in such a family, then you can't know the way the mind shackles itself and amputates its own limbs so adeptly that you never think to miss them, never think that you had anything so obscene as choice.” - Carolina De Robertis

90. “You always use that word "remember",' said Milena. 'You say, "remember, team". You never tell us to think.” - Geoff Ryman

91. “—Necesito sentir que tengo el control.—Ah, ahora me has dado un desafío. — Él dio un paso más cerca. — Para hacerte perder el control.” - Kerrelyn Sparks

92. “You must learn to control your dreams or your dreams will forever control you.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

93. “The world is already yours - why try to conquer it?” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

94. “...freedom of conscience does not mean being uncontrolled - we have to control ourselves and at times submit to others...” - John Geddes

95. “...I'm a modern mountebank - I believe in Physiognomy - after all, we are in control of our face - it's the map of where we've been...” - John Geddes

96. “You want to be competent? she thought. You want to learn to be in control of what goes on around you, rather than just being pushed around? Then you’ll have to learn to deal with failure.” - Brandon Sanderson

97. “Choice- Everyone has them, so take control!” - Mordakhi

98. “The fundamental metaphor of National Socialism as it related to the world around it was the garden, not the wild forest. One of the most important Nazi ideologists, R.W. Darré, made clear the relationship between gardening and genocide: “He who leaves the plants in a garden to themselves will soon find to his surprise that the garden is overgrown by weeds and that even the basic character of the plants has changed. If therefore the garden is to remain the breeding ground for the plants, if, in other words, it is to lift itself above the harsh rule of natural forces, then the forming will of a gardener is necessary, a gardener who, by providing suitable conditions for growing, or by keeping harmful influences away, or by both together, carefully tends what needs tending and ruthlessly eliminates the weeds which would deprive the better plants of nutrition, air, light, and sun. . . . Thus we are facing the realization that questions of breeding are not trivial for political thought, but that they have to be at the center of all considerations, and that their answers must follow from the spiritual, from the ideological attitude of a people. We must even assert that a people can only reach spiritual and moral equilibrium if a well-conceived breeding plan stands at the very center of its culture.” - Derrick Jensen

99. “The art of letting go is simply about personal empowerment. Realizing what you’re in charge of, realizing what you control, and more importantly, what you don’t control.” - Steve Maraboli

100. “I don’t think I like the idea that you just control me, but you get to do anything you like.”“Ah, but that’s because you don’t understand the power exchange. Note that I used the word exchange. Listen, there are as many different ways to practice BDSM as there are people who practice it. I like to play. I like to know that my lover will turn to me when she needs something. I’ll want to protect you. And I like to give you what you need. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel necessary.” - Lexi Blake

101. “Punishment? You don’t have any right to punish me. And I can curse. I choose not to most of the time, but don’t think it doesn’t go through my head, asshole. I was trying to give you something. I was trying to give you my body.”“That’s where you fucked up, little girl. I don’t want your body. I want your soul. I want your everything. And I definitely want your orgasms. I want them all. I’ll be a greedy bastard, savoring them and hoarding them all for myself. You wanted to give me your body? I can buy that on a street corner, sweetheart. You’re the one who’s being selfish now.”“How is it selfish to offer to have sex? I don’t understand what you want.” “First off, I want you to stop hiding yourself from me. You’re the one making this tawdry by pretending it’s dirty and not worthy of the light of day.”“I didn’t mean it that way.” “We’re going to do this my way. We tried yours and it didn’t work, so I’m taking control. I should have done it in the first place.” - Lexi Blake

102. “All violence demands reform, and all violence desperately begs to be healed.” - Bryant McGillns

103. “We all have a sea inside us; can you hear it? Can you hear the ocean roaring?” - Dianna Hardy