Quotes About Control

When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.

A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.

The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all, but we cannot have freedom without wilderness, we cannot have freedom without leagues of open space beyond the cities, where boys and girls, men and women, can live at least part of their lives under no control but their own desires and abilities, free from any and all direct administration by their fellow men.

All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?

I am against all forms of government, including good government.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

Reason is and ought to be, as Hume said, the slave of the passions.

We are caught," continued the good doctor, "in the iron treads of a technological juggernaut. A mindless machine. With a breeder reactor for a heart.

Technology adds a new dimension to the process by providing modern despots with instruments far more efficient than any available to their classical counterparts.

Modern politics is expensive—power follows money.)

It is not enough to fill your juries, your advisory panels, with creative artists. You must put us in positions of policy control.

The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity.

Caligula wished that the Roman people had but one neck that he might cut it off, and as I read this letter I am afraid that for a moment I was capable of wishing the same thing concerning the laboring class of America.

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it.

In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons [...] who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth! The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker! They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent; but they have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power than in the maturer life.

No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity.

True, This! — Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold The arch-enchanters wand! — itself is nothing! — But taking sorcery from the master-hand To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword — States can be saved without it!

Tyranny," said Solon, "is a fair field, but it has no outlet." A subtle, as well as a noble saying; it implies that he who has once made himself the master of the state has no option as to the means by which he must continue his power. Possessed of that fearful authority, his first object is to rule, and it becomes a secondary object to rule well.

Why was she always so cruel, I wondered, even after I had worked so hard for her? Perhaps she needed someone beneath her to know for certain that she was not on the bottom rung. Perhaps being cruel was proof of her success.

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven.