Control In Society Quotes & Sayings

Fear is what created the monster in the room, and in order to overcome the many problems and enslavements that we have today, it is not about getting rid of the monster, but about getting rid of the fear. — Evita Ochel

Domination is a relationship, not a condition; it depends on the participation of both parties. Hierarchical power is not just the gun in the policeman's hand; it is just as much the obedience of the ones who act as if it is always pointed at them. It is not just the government and the executives and the armed forces; it extends through society from top to bottom, an interlocking web of control and compliance. Sometimes all it takes to be complicit in the oppression of millions is to die of natural causes. — CrimethInc.

The British maintained direct control of four major areas in Egyptian society. They included: "security of imperial communications of Egypt, the defense of Egypt against foreign aggression or interference, the protection of foreign interests and foreign minorities, and Sudan and its future status."9 In other words, the British kept control over all aspects of the country that was in their interest and not in the best interests of the Egyptian people. A constitution was signed and implemented in 1923, leading to future expansion of the Egyptian political system. — Robert Eugene Danielson

Just as a moral distinction is drawn between "those at risk" and "those posing a risk", health education routinely draws a distinction between the harm caused by external causes out of the individual's control and that caused by oneself. Lifestyle risk discourse overturns the notion that health hazards in postindustrial society are out of the individual's control. On the contrary, the dominant theme of lifestyle risk discourse is the responsibility of the individual to avoid health risks for the sake of his or her own health as well as the greater good of society. — Deborah Lupton

Power in society is achieved through control of the purse, pen, and politics. — Orrin Woodward

I believe most Afghan men, on an individual level, are far from extremist or fundamentalist.
Hope rests with those men, who control what happens to their daughters. Behind every discreetly ambitious young Afghan woman with budding plans to take on the world, there is an interesting father. And in every successful grown woman who has managed to break new ground and do something women usually do not, there is a determined father, who is redefining honor and society by promoting his daughter. There will always be a small group of elite women with wealthy parents who can choose to go abroad or to take high positions in politics. They will certainly inspire others, but in order for significant numbers of women to take advantage of higher education and participate in the economy on a larger scale, it will take powerful men educating many other men — Jenny Nordberg

I think the HeforShe campaign is a fantastic initiative, and of course men and boys should be involved in seeking equality for women, because we are people, and you are people, and people should help out other people. I think more engagement too could be found from addressing the problems males face from gender inequality, because while the problems girls and women face from sexism are much more violent, I sometimes think the pressures on boys and men are more poisonous. If we think about it clearly, we see that the gender inequalities men face often lead to the gender inequalities women face. For instance, domestic abuse is often about a man's assertion of power and control, but if he didn't think he needed those things in the first place, would the abuse ever happen? Similarly, rape culture is often about male entitlement, but that sense of entitlement comes from what we as a society tell men about their gender, and what it means. — Abigail Tarttelin

In the years since man unlocked the power stored up within the atom, the world has made progress, halting, but effective, toward bringing that power under human control. The challenge may be our salvation. As we begin to master the destructive potentialities of modern science, we move toward a new era in which science can fulfill its creative promise and help bring into existence the happiest society the world has ever known. — John F. Kennedy

Everything that rises will fall. Empires, societies, governments. None of them lasts forever. Why? Because even though they are the products of change, they become resistant to change. The longer a society survives, the more it clings to its power, and the more it resists progress. The more it resists progress- resists change- the more its ciizens demand it. In response, the society tighten its grip, desperate to maintain control. It's afraid of losing its hold. — Victoria Schwab

A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder. — John Dewey

A lot is said, by foreigners and the left, about America being a violent society. Yet if you subtract the crime statistics for its largest cities places that have been under the strict political control of so-called "progressives", sometimes for many generations what remains, the real America, is the most peaceful, productive, prosperous, and truly progressive civilization in all of human history. — L. Neil Smith

It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. That's set out in the Constitution. — Sandra Day O'Connor

Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens' lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons. — Ron Paul

A slow but steady transformation of deviance has taken place in American society. It has not been a change in behavior as such, but in how behavior is defined. Deviant behaviors that were once defined as immoral, sinful, or criminal have been given medical meanings. Some say that rehabilitation has replaced punishment, but in many cases medical treatments have become a new form of punishment and social control. — Peter Conrad

One instance of this failure is the case of smoke, as well as air pollution generally. In so far as the outpouring of smoke by factories pollutes the air and damages the persons and property of others, it is an invasive act. It is equivalent to an act of vandalism and in a truly free society would have been punished after court action brought by the victims. Air pollution, then, is not an example of a defect in a system of absolute property rights, but of failure on the part of the government to preserve property rights. Note that the remedy, in a free society, is not the creation of an administrative State bureau to prescribe regulations for smoke control. The remedy is judicial action to punish and proscribe pollution damage to the person and property of others.48 In — Murray N. Rothbard

There is nothing novel or comedic or righteous about men using the threat of sexual violence to control non-compliant women. This is how society has always functioned. Stay indoors, women. Stay safe. Stay quiet. Stay in the kitchen. Stay pregnant. Stay our of the world. IF you want to talk about silencing, censorship, placing limits and consequences on speech, this is what it looks like. — Lindy West

to Vaneigem and the Situationists who by shrewd use of collage and juxtaposition exposed both the poverty and richness of slogans, and the thinly veiled hypocrisy of a "spectacular" society which by not respecting words abuses people, and by insulting the intelligence creates a state of political cretinisation in which the many and various forms of authoritarian control dominate. — Alexis Lykiard

For me, it's not important whether [subjects] are naked, half-naked, or dressed. What I'm more interested in is how they present themselves: if someone is half-naked and having self-confidence or you have the feeling that she has or he has control of the situation. She likes to do it. Then I have nothing against it. But it's true that society doesn't talk about such issues. They just talk about whether there is a breast or not, but for me it's more interesting how the power game of camera and object is shown. And if it's a cool picture. — Pipilotti Rist

Men are biological. Women are biological. We pretend our minds are in control, but that's a very tenuous control at best, and a civilized society can't be built on uncontrolled biology. I see it in my work: intelligence betrayed by lust, by jealousy, by macho ownership; otherwise trustworthy men who can't be trusted at all around women, or vice versa. Hell, look at Congress. Well-intentioned, progressive, admired law-makers who end up losing it all because they can't control how they react to women! And I certainly don't trust most women around men — Sheri S. Tepper

The Church is the only entity equipped to penetrate to the spiritual roots of our moral illnesses. We are to call out the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the economy, enlisting the weapons of love, joy, patience, goodness, kindness and self-control, which are the foundation of true freedom. Many Christian teachers rightly point out that our society's willingness to take on the slavery of debt in exchange for stuff is an expression of the deep emptiness that people are seeking to fill within themselves. One of the most powerful aspects of the Gospel is that this emptiness can only be filled by the loving reconnection with the Father that Jesus offers. For this reason, it is less critical that we condemn the world's decadence than that we make an appeal to human desire and how it is genuinely fulfilled. — Stephen K. De Silva

The recent experience of totalitarianism in Europe was foreshadowed at the French Revolution, when the Committee of Public Safety acted in the same way as the Nazi and Communist parties, setting up 'parallel structures' through which to control the state and to exert a micromanagerial tyranny over every aspect of civil society.
Let us at least be realistic, and recognize that, if totalitarian governments have arisen and spread with such rapidity in modern times, this is because there is something in human nature to which they correspond and on which they draw for their moral energy. — Roger Scruton

Society really seems to have developed an unquestioning obedience towards spooky types ... Did we get to where we are today via a slippery slope that was entirely within our control to stop? Or was it a relatively instantaneous sea change that sneaked in undetected because of pervasive government secrecy? — Edward Snowden

Sex is the mysticism of a materialistic society - in the beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh became Word ... [it has] its own mysteries - this is my birth [control] pill; swallow it in remembrance of me! — Malcolm Muggeridge

he had learned for mind control and for erasing the habit of worry that was consuming so many in our complex society. — Robin S. Sharma

She never indulged in reveries or tried to be clever in her conversation; she seemed to have drawn a line in her mind beyond which she never went. It was quite obvious that feelings, every kind of relationship, including love, entered into her life on equal terms with everything else, while in the case of other women love quite manifestly takes part, if not in deeds, then in words, in all the problems of life, and everything else is allowed in only in so far as love leaves room for it. The thing this woman esteemed most was the art of living, of being able to control oneself, of keeping a balance between thought and intention, intention and realization. You could never take her unawares, by surprise, but she was like a watchful enemy whose expectant gaze would always be fixed on you, however hard you tried to lie in wait for him. High society was her element, and therefore tact and caution prompted her every thought, word, and movement. — Ivan Goncharov

Government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of the government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state. — John C. Calhoun

The maniacal lunatics in control of our society know exactly how human beings tick and they are masters at manipulation. — Bruce McDonald

For Indigenous Australians, equal rights and citizenship have not always translated into full participation in Australian society. All Indigenous Australians have only been counted in the census since the 1967 Referendum. Even so, State protection and welfare laws continued to control the lives of Indigenous Australians and denied them equal rights, well into the 1970's. — Jackie Huggins

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 death
squads, 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. — Noam Chomsky

With humility comes the willingness to stop trying to control or change other people or life situations or events ostensibly 'for their own good'. To be a committed spiritual seeker, it is necessary to relinquish the desire to be 'right' or of imaginary value to society. In fact, nobody's ego or belief systems are of any value to society at all. The world is neither good nor bad nor defective, nor is it in need of help or modification because its appearance is only a projection of one's own mind. No such world exists. — David R. Hawkins

Dollar for dollar, no other society approaches the United States in terms of the number of square feet per person, the number of baths per bedroom, the number of appliances in the kitchen, the quality of the climate control, and the convenience of the garage. The American private realm is simply a superior product. The problem is that most suburban residents, the minute the leave this refuge, are confronted by a tawdry and stressful environment. They enter their cars and embark on a journey of banality and hostility that lasts until they arrive that interior of their next destination. Americans may have the finest private realm in the developed world, but our public realm is brutal. — Andres Duany

Needless to say, Lot kept his faith to himself. He told no one of his family background, for fear of them discovering his religion. He never told anyone who he really was. He also saw that the society that touted itself as the "Cities of Love" was actually quite inhospitable to strangers and visitors. Traveling merchants who came to sell their wares in the cities were usually beat up and run out of town, because they were considered greedy. In reality, it was because their prices were so cheap. But the local workers maintained a greedy control over the marketplace. The city took so much of the workers' income, they barely had enough to live on. So, they did not want anyone else to have what they could not. — Brian Godawa

Centralization of society's vital services in giant computer centers, reservoirs, nuclear power plants, air- traffic control centers, 100-story skyscrapers, and government compounds increases its vulnerability ... choosing his targets, today's saboteur could pollute a city's water supply, dynamite power transmission towers, cripple an airport control center, destroy a corporate or government computer center. — Anatol Rapoport

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ... In almost every act of our daily 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 which control the public mind. — Edward L. Bernays

The dioxin story is the story of how science has failed to provide us with answers, how corporations control policymaking and decisions in our society, and how government is silenced. — Lois Gibbs

What I'm interested in is the exploration of the body and desire as a self-actualising or fulfilling component on the individual's life journey instead of as a part of the social, political, or economic structure of a "society" or "civilization." In this sense all desire is queer desire because it moves against these mechanisms of control. The hard part, the painful part, is for us ourselves to learn how to love one another, have affection for one another, support and be kind to one another. You can spend a life learning how to do it properly. — Kazim Ali

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society - a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals. — Friedrich Hayek

Legalizing pot would benefit society by first off having laws applicable to all, without those in control breaking the laws and making a mockery of our system. We need social justice. This requires laws equally applied to all. In addition, we could educate and rehabilitate the wrong doers. Not incarnate those misfortunate people for doubtful wrongs. — Steven Machat

Your ego depends on mirrors. And every relationship functions as a mirror, every person you meet functions as a mirror, and this ego goes on controlling you. And why does it control in the first place? It controls because the society appreciates control, because the society gives you even more ego if you control. — Osho

Those who have a scientific outlook on human behaviour, moreover, find it impossible to label any action as 'sin'; they realise that what we do has its origin in our heredity, our education, and our environment, and that it is by control of these causes, rather than by denunciation, that conduct injurious to society is to be prevented. — Bertrand Russell

There is an absence of democratic accountability and control in every sphere of government and the state. To address this debilitating legacy requires determined action and a deep commitment to transforming our society from a crisis ridden present into something all South Africans can be truly proud of. — Nelson Mandela

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is ... in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. — Theodore Dalrymple

I believe deeply in a common humanity. The black man belongs to the family of man. One part of that family is out of control - like a virus or cancer - and that is the white man. He and his technological society are bent on destroying the world. Everywhere the white man has gone with his empire, he has destroyed people, races, societies, cultures, and in the course of it, has sterilized himself. He is completely the mechanical man: without heart, without soul. He is the Tin Man of The Wizard of Oz. But I don't believe that all the white people in the world are no good. — Margaret Walker

MASTERED, the Poem Weary of secrets, Of shame and denying, A lifetime of stories, Excuses, and lying, Dark nights lying awake, Frightened and crying, With society's eyes Judgmental and prying. Existing in limbo, No peace in her soul Just shadow and smoke, And a vast gaping hole. Submissive by nature, Now taking its toll, Shan't ever confess, Yearns a Master's control — K.L. Silver

In the agreement to rescue Rome [i.e., the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy] from the predicament of losing its world control to Protestantism, and to preserve the spiritual and temporal supremacy which the popes [had] 'usurped' during the Middle Ages, Rome now 'sold' the [Roman Catholic] Church to the Society of Jesus [i.e., the Jesuits]; in essence the popes surrendered themselves into their hands. — John Daniel

As a Catholic, you can have two views on capital punishment. You can think, let Caesar do what Caesar needs to do, and the law says you can impose capital punishment, so you impose it. You can [also] be a Catholic who says we can't kill, we can't kill babies and we can't kill adults. If you let a decision be driven by your personal views, then you are not doing what a judge needs to do, which is enforce the laws of the society that you are in. But you can control your own behavior, and that is the choice that the church and God gives us - what kind of people are we going to be. — Sonia Sotomayor

All that Lenin learned about business from the tales of his comrades who occasionally sat in business offices was that it required a lot of scribbling, recording, and ciphering. Thus, he declares that accounting and control are the chief things necessary for the organizing and correct functioning of society ... Here we have the philosophy of the filing clerk in its full glory. — Ludwig Von Mises

In 1965, worked with Nite Owl bringing street gangs under control. Tackled the Big Figure together. Brought down Underboss together. Good team.
Until he got soft, like rest. Until he quit.
No staying power. None of them. Except Comedian. Met him in 1966. Forceful personality. Didn't care if people liked him. Uncompromising. Admired that.
Of us all, he understood most. About world. About people. About society and what's happening to it.
Things everyone knows in gut. Things everyone too scared to face, too polite to talk about. He understood.
Understood man's capacity for horrors and never quit. Saw the world's black underbelly and never surrendered. Once man has seen, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend it doesn't exist.
No matter who orders him to look the other way.
We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to.
We do it because we are compelled. — Alan Moore

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple - children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse - loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence. — Christopher S. Hyatt

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas. — Karl Marx

Its little wonder anxiety, depression and other mental illness is at such a high point at this time in the world; people have little control over the mental capacities, of their thoughts, perceptions, feelings and emotions. People never get a moments silence from the constant bombardment and when they do they don't know how to manage their thoughts so the endless barrage of noise simply continues giving them no time or space for clarity. — Evan Sutter

As Lenin put it, "Through the schools we will transform the old world... the final victory will belong to the schools... the final sketch plan of the socialist society will belong to the schools." So the Frankfurt School targeted and took control of the teachers' colleges in order to control what was being taught to children.
...young teachers are forced to go through possibly the most rigorous courses of indoctrination available in any universities. — Anna Sofia Botkin

Anarcho-syndic alism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society. — Noam Chomsky

Without war the lower elements of mankind have increased all out of proportion. They threaten the educated few, those with scientific knowledge and training, the ones equipped to direct society. They have no regard for science or a scientific society, based on reason. And this Movement seeks to aid and abet them. Only when scientists are in full control can the - — Philip K. Dick

Those who rule have always had an interest in shaping the perceptions of those they wish to rule. But never in the history of humanity has their toolbox been so full. Advances in technology and psychology have enabled the messages of the rulers to permeate our consciousness to a degree no prior society could have imagined. — James Rozoff

The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is science itself. The discovery must be compared in importance with the invention of cave-painting and of writing. Like these earlier human creations, science is an attempt to control our surroundings by entering into them and understanding them from inside. And like them, science has surely made a critical step in human development which cannot be reversed. We cannot conceive a future society without science. — Jacob Bronowski

People would do well to ask themselves how many of their ambitions and aspirations derive from the type of economic system they inhabit and the insecurity and exhaustion it creates, and question the sense and purpose of a society where control of a large portion of life is abdicated under contract in the labour market, and where immense creativity and potential is stifled by the need to do difficult and repetitive tasks in order to earn a wage. — Tony Benn

Any society that entails the strengthening of the state apparatus by giving it unchecked control over the economy, and re-unites the polity and the economy, is an historical regression. In it there is no more future for the public, or for the freedoms it supported, than there was under feudalism. — Robert Higgs

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. — Theodore Dalrymple

In a word, removing control farther away from the ordinary citizen and taxpayer is tantamount to giving the intelligent, far-sighted and public spirited elements in society a longer lever to work with. — Edward Alsworth Ross

Shall I not render a service to men in speaking to them only of morality? This morality is so pure, so holy, so universal, so clear, so ancient, that it seems to come from God himself, like the light which we regard as the first of his works. Has he not given men self-love to secure their preservation; benevolence, beneficence, and virtue to control their self-love; the natural need to form a society; pleasure to enjoy, pain to warn us to enjoy in moderation, passions to spur us to great deeds, and wisdom to curb our passions? — Voltaire

Liar! I know that you humans build your life in lies. It starts with your mortal lords and their fabricated gods. They use fictitious stories to impregnate the minds of people, and like herds of sheep they do as their told. With manipulation alone is enough to secure their reign. After all, is it not in your nature to be wanted and purposeful? It is such an easy game to play. I have observed this falsehood accepted by fathers and mothers over and over again. The idiocy becomes one with their children, and they become the infrastructure that not only sedates but corrodes the soul with instructed conformity. In the end, lies are all that you are. — H.S. Crow

When you have a strong conservative streak in your society," Zeyk would say, "which detaches itself from the progressive streak, that's when you get the worst kinds of civil wars. As in the conflict in Colombia that they called La Violencia, for instance. A civil war that became a complete breakdown of the state, a chaos that no one could understand, much less control. — Kim Stanley Robinson

The more extensive the revolution, the more considerable the chances of the war that it
implies. The society born of the revolution of 1789 wanted to fight for Europe. The society born of the
1917 revolution is fighting for universal dominion. Total revolution ends by demanding - we shall see
why - the control of the world. While waiting for this to happen, if happen it must, the history of man, in
one sense, is the sum total of his successive rebellions. In other words, the movement of transition which
can be clearly expressed in terms of space is only an approximation in terms of time. What was devoutly
called, in the nineteenth century, the progressive emancipation of the human race appears, from the
outside, like an uninterrupted series of rebellions, which overreach themselves and try to find their
formulation in ideas, but which have not yet reached the point of definitive revolution where everything
in heaven and on earth would be stabilized. — Albert Camus

People love information. Right now in our society, we have an obesity epidemic. Because for the first time in history, we have access to food whenever we want, we don't know how to control ourselves. I think we have the exact same problem with information. — Marco Arment

If one would discern the centers of dominance in any society, one need only look to its definitions of "virtue" and "vice" or "legal" and "criminal," for, in the strength to set standards, resides the strength to maintain control. — Freda Adler

The most important eugenic policy at this time is to see that birth control is made equally available to all individuals in every class of society — Frederick Osborn

The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.'
- Traveller — Steven Erikson

Thai society rarely attempts to control literature in the same way that it vigilantly polices visual art. It's ironic because people in this society are more aware of literature than they are of art. — Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made. — Gore Vidal

A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda. — Alex Carey

The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain's orders. The captain is the consumer ... [Consumers] make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. — Ludwig Von Mises

The phenomenon of money presupposes an economic order in which production is based on division of labour and in which private property consists not only in goods of the first order (consumption goods), but also in goods of higher orders (production goods). In such a society, there is no systematic centralized control of production, for this is inconceivable without centralized disposal over the means of production. — Ludwig Von Mises

Human beings have become a virus to planet Earth. Our way of life consists of constant pollution of natural resources, violence between nations, oppression of populations, torturing of animals, and the destruction of our own health and wellness. Our society is not sustainable and the people in control have no interest in the well being of the people or the planet. — Joseph P. Kauffman

For men to focus on controlling women's reproduction to solve a society's problems seems nothing short of mad or, at best, superstitious. But men's superstition or insanity has real and dire consequences for the women who are its object. And states, too, home in on women's bodies, perhaps to create the illusion that men are in control of uncontrollable forces. Indeed, almost all governments try to control women's bodies and regulate their appearance in some way. — Marilyn French

So the idea was that, some catastrophic event had happened. There was a long dark age and then out of that, 100 years ago in this world, seven barons - these men and women - rose up and formed the new society. It's a feudal world, a part feudal barons and part warlord and part mob boss and they each control a huge resource so that there's an uneasy alliance, but they all need each other. — Alfred Gough

DENIAL OF EMOTIONS
Our culture does not handle emotions well. We like folks to be happy and fine. We learn rituals of acting happy and fine at an early age. I can remember many times telling people "I'm fine" when I felt like the world was caving in on me. I often think of Senator Muskie who cried on the campaign trail when running for president. From that moment on he was history. We don't want a president who has emotions. We would rather have one that can act! Emotions are certainly not acceptable in the workplace. True expression of any emotions that are not "positive" are met with disdain. — John Bradshaw

Many criminologists believe that the source of the state's pacifying effect isn't just its brute coercive power but the trust it commands among the populace. After all, no state can post an informant in every pub and farmhouse to monitor breaches of the law, and those that try are totalitarian dictatorships that rule by fear, not civilized societies where people coexist through self-control and empathy. A Leviathan can civilize a society only when the citizens feel that its laws, law enforcement, and other social arrangements are legitimate, so that they don't fall back on their worst impulses as soon as Leviathan's back is turned. — Steven Pinker

When you say 'I want to fit in,' you are essentially volunteering yourself as a victim, and when the thing you want to fit in with is 'society' - well, as 'society' is just another word for government, you're basically begging the government to control you and use you as it wishes for its nefarious purposes, which can be pretty damn nefarious, if 'nefarious' means what I believe it does. — Frank Portman

Society tried to teach me that children are by nature selfish, out-of-control, and demanding, that their goal is power and that they are always trying to see how much they can get away with, that you can't let children manipulate you or become too dependant, and that disobedience equals disrespect. As a mother, I have come to believe strongly that my child's primary goals are having his needs met, feeling connected to others, and feeling self-worth. His misbehavior is an attempt to get a need met or to feel significance and connection, done in an appropriate way ... my job as a parent is to help my child identify and meet those needs in appropriate ways. - Lisa S. — Hilary Flower

A lot of people don't know what democracy and power really is. The real power is held by whichever social class has ownership and control of the means of production, economy and state apparatus. In capitalist society, the big business class has this power. Democracy is the will of the majority of the ruling class being put into law and action. So in a capitalist democracy, the big business class has the power through their control of the means of production, economy and state apparatus. People voting in elections is not the real power at all.
Until the workers in society democratically control the means of production, economy and state apparatus, which will enable society to be run in the interests of the wants and needs of the mass population, then big business will continue ruling in the interests of corporate profit, which means the super-rich elite exploiting all of us. — Charles Eisenstein

We are still in various kinds of patriarchal systems. The very definition of patriarchy is that men control women as the means of reproduction, so the idea that a woman's main role is to have children often means society wants more workers, more soldiers. The idea that how many children we have should be controlled by the family, the church, the nation - by anyone but women themselves - is still very deep and very strong. — Gloria Steinem

The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, they had some control over military matters. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red, White, and Black: "Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society. — Howard Zinn

Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make non-violence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development, for economic and political justice and for violence control. — Dennis Kucinich

One reason inflation is so destructive is because some people benefit greatly while other people suffer; society is divided into winners and losers. The winners regard the good things that happen to them as the natural result of their own foresight, prudence, and initiative. They regard the bad things, the rise in the prices of the things they buy, as produced by forces outside their control. Almost everyone will say that he is against inflation; what he generally means is that he is against the bad things that have happened to him. — Milton Friedman

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity. — Sigmund Freud

We are all a little desexualized, a little defeminized. We can't carry our bodies comfortably in a society that is so bent against women. In order to be a "brain" in the public realm, we control our "bodies. — Elif Shafak

The Internet is the Petri dish of humanity. We can't control what grows in it, but we don't have to watch either. — Tiffany Madison

What makes one Sumerian city better than another one? A bigger ziggurat? A
better football team?"
"Better me."
"What are me?"
"Rules or principles that control the operation of society, like a code of laws,
but on a more fundamental level."
"I don't get it."
"That is the point. Sumerian myths are not 'readable' or 'enjoyable' in the
same sense that Greek and Hebrew myths are. They reflect a fundamentally
different consciousness from ours. — Neal Stephenson

Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number. — Michael Pare

Those of us who work in this field see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act. These human phenomena can be started, stopped or eliminated by the use of various types of chemical substances. What we can produce with our science now will affect the entire society." A "utopia" could be found - providing "a sense of stability and certainty, whether realistic or not. — Nathan S. Kline

Radicalism itself ceases to be radical when absorbed mainly in preserving its control over a society or an economy. — Eric Hoffer

Maybe the artist becomes the marshal. It'd probably be a very different kind of society with artists in control. — Joelle Carter

She is a soft, deadly creature. Kind and timid and terrifying. She's completely out of control and has no idea what she's capable of. And even though she hates me, I can't help but be fascinated by her. I'm enchanted by her pretend-innocence; jealous, even, of the power she wields so unwittingly. I want so much to be a part of her world. I want to know what it's like to be in her mind, to feel what she feels. It seems a tremendous weight to carry.
And now she's out there, somewhere, unleashed on society.
What a beautiful disaster. — Tahereh Mafi

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control? — James Hillman

There are certain functions that the family performs. In the first place the family provides society with an orderly means of reproduction, while at the same time the norms of marriage control the potentially disruptive forces of sexuality. Second, the family provides physical and economic support for the child during the early years of dependence. The child receives its primary socialization in the family, learning the essential ideas and values required for adult life. — Adrian Wilson

You have to question a cinematic culture that preaches artistic expression, and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario, which is both complicit and complex. It's misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman's sexual presentation of self. — Ryan Gosling

There are contradictory tendencies in American society. There's a huge range of activities that one can engage in that mark it as a quite free society. It's also true to say that the powers that be have so much control over how people think that there are fewer and fewer people who make use of the rights and information available to them. — Norman Finkelstein

The myth of self-sufficiency blinds us to the workings of other forces in family life. For families are not now, nor were they ever, the self-sufficient building blocks of society, exclusively responsible, praiseworthy, and blamable for their own destiny. They are deeply influenced by broad social and economic forces over which they have little control. — Kenneth Keniston

By taking a look back at history, we can easily come to understand how the elite gained so much control over society, and what their motives are. The people in power do not care about the power of the people. They care about control, they do not want people to be smart or independent, they want them to be good workers, obedient and unaware. — Joseph P. Kauffman