Great Throughts Treasury

"Under the conditions of modern life we have more control over our thoughts, and in connection with this there is a special method by which we may work on the development of our consciousness using that instrument which is most obedient to our will; that is, our mind, or the intellectual center. In order to understand more clearly what I am going to say, you must try to remember that we have no control over our consciousness. When I said that we can become more conscious, or that a man can be made conscious for a moment simply by asking him if he is conscious or not, I used the words 'conscious' or 'consciousness' in a relative sense. There are so many degrees of consciousness and every higher degree means 'consciousness' in relation to a lower degree. But, if we have no control over consciousness itself, we have a certain control over our thinking about consciousness, and we can construct our thinking in such a way as to bring consciousness. What I mean is that by giving to our thoughts the direction which they would have in a moment of consciousness, we can, in this way, induce consciousness. " - P.D. Ouspensky, fully Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, also Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii, also Uspenskii or Uspensky

"The main uniform effect of calamities upon the political and social structure of society is an expansion of governmental regulation, regimentation, and control of social relationships and a decrease in the regulation and management of social relationships by individuals and private groups. The expansion of governmental control and regulation assumes a variety of forms, embracing socialistic or communistic totalitarianism, fascist totalitarianism, monarchial autocracy, and theocracy. Now it is effected by a revolutionary regime, now by a counterrevolutionary regime; now by a military dictatorship, now by a dictatorship, now by a dictatorial bureaucracy. From both the quantitative and the qualitative point of view, such an expansion of governmental control means a decrease of freedom, a curtailment of the autonomy of individuals and private groups in the regulation and management of their individual behavior and their social relationships, the decline of constitutional and democratic institutions." - Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin

"In the twentieth century the magnificent sensate house of Western man began to deteriorate rapidly and then to crumble. There was, among other things, a disintegration of its moral, legal, and other values which, from within, control and guide the behavior of individuals and groups. When human beings cease to be controlled by deeply interiorized religious, ethical, aesthetic and other values, individuals and groups become the victims of crude power and fraud as the supreme controlling forces of their behavior, relationship, and destiny. In such circumstances, man turns into a human animal driven mainly by his biological urges, passions, and lust. Individual and collective unrestricted egotism flares up; a struggle for existence intensifies; might becomes right; and wars, bloody revolutions, crime, and other forms of interhuman strife and bestiality explode on an unprecedented scale. So it was in all great transitory periods." - Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin

"By becoming conscious of the paramount importance of the supraconscious and by earnest striving for its grace, we can activate its creative potential and its control over our conscious and unconscious forces. By all these means we can break the thick prison walls erected by prevalent pseudo-science around the supraconscious. " - Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin

"The suffering people of this world must come together to take control of their lives, to wrest political power from their present masters pushing them towards destruction. The Earth has been mistreated and only by restoring a balance, only by living with the Earth, only by emphasizsing knowledge and expertise towards soft energies and soft technology for people and for life, can we overcome the patriarchal ego." - Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley

"The control of self means the control of everything." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Where self-interest is suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control that dries up the wellspring of initiative and creativity. " - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"You must strive to multiply bread so that it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not rather favor an artificial control of birth, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life." - Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL

"There remain therefore, in human nature the effects of original sin, the chief of which are weakness of will and disorderly inclinations. Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction shall drive it away [Prov. 22: 15]. Disorderly inclinations then must be corrected, good tendencies encouraged and regulated from tender childhood, and above all the mind must be enlightened and the will strengthened by supernatural truth and by the means of grace, without which it is impossible to control evil impulses." -

"Fundamentalists propagate beating children because they disavow their own painful experiences and are unaware of the fact that they are using children as scapegoats. It is imperative for us to launch this kind of preventive legislation in the major countries of Europe and the USA before the fundamentalists gain any further control of the political arena. It is designed to have a protective and informative function for parents. It does not set out to incriminate anyone." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"As soon as Goals 2000 passed, it was attacked by extremists, who stirred up anxious parents with visions of totalitarian control over their children's minds and of secular humanists stealing their children's souls. What are these goals that promote such reactions: By 2000: All children in America will start school ready to learn. High school graduation rates will increase to at least 90%. All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter. US students will be first in the world in science & math. Every adult will be literate and will possess the skills necessary to compete in a global economy. Every school will be free of drugs & violence. Teachers will have access to continuing education. Every school will promote partnerships with parents. These goals are hardly the stuff of revolution and are not likely to be fully achieved by 2000. We cannot expect to reverse decades of declining standards in a few years." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"In many parts of the world, women and girls are especially vulnerable to HIV/AIDS because they lack control over most aspects of their life. Cultural expectations and gender roles expose women and girls to violence, sexual exploitation and far greater risk for infection." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Mother Teresa had just delivered a speech against abortion, and she wanted to talk to me. Mother Teresa was unerringly direct. She disagreed with my views on a woman's right to choose and told me so. Over the years, she sent me dozens of notes and messages with the same gentle entreaty. Mother Teresa never lectured or scolded me; her admonitions were always loving and heartfelt. I had the greatest respect for her opposition to abortion, but I believe that it is dangerous to give any state the power to enforce criminal penalties against women and doctors. I consider that a slippery slope to state control in China and Communist Romania. I also disagreed with her opposition--and that of the Catholic Church--to birth control. However, I support the right of people of faith to speak out against abortion and try to dissuade women, without coercion or criminalization, from choosing abortion instead of adoption. Mother Teresa and I found much common ground in many other areas including the importance of adoption." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Some critics of public schools urge greater competition among schools as a way of returning control from bureaucrats to parents and teachers. I find their argument persuasive and I favor promoting choice among public schools, much as the President's Charter Schools Initiative encourages. Charter schools are public schools created and operated under a charter. They may be organized by parents, teachers, or others. The idea is that they should be freed from regulations that stifle innovation, so they can focus on getting results. By 1995, 19 states had enacted charter school laws about 200 schools have been granted charters. The Improving America's Schools Act, passed in October 1994 with the President's support, provided federal funds for a wide range of reforms, including launching charter schools. Federal funding is needed to break through bureaucratic attitudes that block change and frustrate students and parents, driving some to leave public schools." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"The first step is to take weapons off the streets and to put more police on them. The Brady Bill, which my husband signed into law in 1995, imposes a 5-day waiting period for gun purchases; time enough for authorities to check out a buyer's record and for the buyer to cool down about any conflict he might have intended the gun to resolve. Since it was enacted, more than 40,000 people with criminal records have been prevented from buying guns. The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act banned 19 types of military-style assault weapons whose only purpose is to kill people… As part of a zero tolerance policy for weapons, drugs, and other threats to the safety of teachers and students, the President signed an executive order decreeing that any student who comes to school with a gun will be expelled and punished as a condition of federal aid." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"When I defend my pro-choice position in the debate over abortion in our country, I frequently refer to Romania, where pregnancy could be monitored on behalf of the state, and to China, where it could be forcibly terminated. One reason I continue to oppose efforts to criminalize abortion is that I do not believe any government should have the power to dictate, through law or police action, a woman’s most personal decision. [The Romanian dictatorship in the 1980s] banned birth control and abortion, insisting that women bear children for the sake of the state. Women told me how they had been carted from their workplace once a month to be examined by government doctors whose task was to make sure they weren’t using contraceptives or aborting pregnancies. I could not imagine a more humiliating experience. In Romania and elsewhere, many children were born unwanted or into families that could not afford to care for them. They became wards of the state, warehoused in orphanages." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They all want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe but even here at home we have to stand up for women’s rights and we have to reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America has to set an example for the entire world." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet." - Albert Einstein

"All sports are time control demonstrations." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"Is Humanism a religion, perhaps, the next great religion? Yes, it must be so characterized, for the word, religion, has become a symbol for answers to that basic interrogation of human life, the human situation, and the nature of things---which every human being, in some degree and in some fashion, makes. What can I expect from life? What kind of universe is it? Is there, as some say, a friendly Providence in control of it? And, if not, what then? The universe of discourse of religion consists of such questions, and the answers relevant to them. Christian theism and Vedantic mysticism are but historic frameworks in relation to which answers have in the past been given to these poignant and persistent queries. But there is nothing sacrosanct and self-certifying about these frameworks. What Humanism represents is the awareness of another framework, more consonant with wider and deeper knowledge about man and his world. The Humanist movement is engaged in formulating answers, with what wisdom it can achieve, to these basic questions. It would be absurd to expect complete novelty in either framework or answers. Many people throughout the ages have had a shrewd suspicion that established beliefs were insecurely based. Humanism at its best represents a growth and a maturing of its perspective...I fear that the orthodox idea of religion is something static and given---once for all. The Humanist thinks of his answers as responsible ones, that is, responsible to the best thought and knowledge on the subjects involved. He [they are] is always ready for honest debate... I want to contrast the perspective of Humanism with that of traditional rationalism...There is no Humanist who does not appreciate with respect and admiration the moving story of the Gospels. Seen as one of the culminations of Judaism in the setting of the Roman Empire, it speaks to us of nobility of soul, human love, pity, and comradeship; and this among everyday people fired by moral and religious leadership of high quality. The heroic and the earthly touch meet, and mingle; and so it has been ever since... What have the intervening centuries made possible? The gradual disentangling of ethical principle and example from both the early framework of belief and the later ecclesiastical development of power and dogma which supervened. But the notes of love and self-sacrifice remain as perennial chords. This also, is greatly human. The older rationalism was on the defensive. And so it expressed itself too often in negative terms: not this; not that; not God; not revelation; not personal immortality. What Humanism signified was a shift from negation to construction. There came a time when naturalism no longer felt on the defensive. Rather, supernaturalism began, it its eyes, to grow dim and fade out despite all the blustering and rationalizations of its advocates." - R. W. Sellars, fully Roy Wood Sellars

"THE more science searches into the origin of disease, the more it becomes convinced that the root of physical ailments lies in mental disturb- ance. The body, of itself, possesses, we find, all the elements that make for health and strength, and if these were not interfered with, man's life upon earth would be untainted with pain or suffering. Interference with the state of the body usually emanates from the mind. The mind is not a mere organ of the body ; it is the power-house, the source from which all the organs draw their vitality and their ability to function. The influence of the mind over the body is absolute. Every one is familiar with the fact that bashfulness or embarrassment, purely mental sensations, will cause the blood to rush into the face ; while fear, on the other hand, will cause it to recede. Joy expresses itself in bright glances, in a "glow of happiness," worry is readily recognized in the drawn mouth and puckered brow. Anger, sorrow, astonishment, all mental states, in fact, bring forth corresponding physical manifestations. These are but some of the superficial aspects of the control of the mind over the body. Physiologists tell us that joy creates a secretion within the body which stimulates the heart and prompts the individual to greater action, while worry creates a secretion of opposite tendency, which retards the inner processes and impedes the efforts of the individual. " - Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein

"Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

"As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no high-minded orientation, no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

"Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

"The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no high-minded orientation, no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

"Can one ever bring God under control through wealth? He can be tamed only through love. What does He want? Certainly not wealth! He wants from His devotees love, devotion, feeling, discrimination, and renunciation." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"Only the ego that is attached to 'woman and. gold' is harmful. But the ego that feels it is the servant of God does no harm to anybody. Neither does the ego of a child, which is not under the control of any guna. One moment children quarrel, and the next moment they are on friendly terms. One moment they build their toy houses with great care, and immediately afterwards they knock them down. There is no harm in the 'I-consciousness' that makes one feel oneself to be a child of God or His servant. This ego is really no ego at all. It is like sugar candy, which is not like other sweets. Other sweets make one ill; but sugar candy relieves acidity. Or take the case of Om. It is unlike other sounds." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"The 'ego of a child' is not attached to anything. The child is beyond the three gunas; he is not under the control of any of them. One moment you find him angry; the next moment it is all over. One moment you see him building his play house; the next moment he forgets all about it. Now you see him love his playmates; but if they are out of his sight a few days he forgets all about them. A child is not under the control of any of the gunas" - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"The upshot of the whole thing is that, no matter what path you follow, yoga is impossible unless the mind becomes quiet. The mind of a yogi is under his control; he is not under the control of his mind." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler

"Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable." - Richard Avedon

"Children are not our property, and they are not ours to control any more that we were our parents' property or theirs to control." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach

"What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it? What if I could meet a super-advanced . . . what if a Siddhartha or a Jesus came into our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if I could meet him in person, if he were flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me?" - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach

"Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach

"As our appreciation of happiness in relationship increases, we take notice of the things that tend to take us away from this feeling. One major catalyst taking us away is the need to be right. An opinion that is taken too seriously sets up conditions that must be met first before you can be happy. In relationships, this might sound like 'You must agree with or see my point of view in order for me to love and respect you.' In a more positive feeling state, this attitude would seem silly or harmful. We can disagree, even on important issues, and still love one another - when our own thought systems no longer have control over our lives and we see the innocence in our divergent points of view." - Richard Carlson

"Genes do indirectly control the manufacture of bodies, and the influence is strictly one way: acquired characteristics are not inherited. No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch." - Richard Dawkins

"The evolutionary importance of the fact that genes control embryonic development is this: it means that genes are at least partly responsible for their own survival in the future, because their survival depends on the efficiency of the bodies in which they live and which they helped to build." - Richard Dawkins

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins

"To a survival machine, another survival machine (which is not its own child or another close relative) is part of its environment, like a rock or a river or a lump of food. It is something that gets in the way, or something that can be exploited. It differs from a rock or a river in one important respect: it is inclined to hit back. This is because it too is a machine that holds its immortal genes in trust for the future, and it too will stop at nothing to preserve them. Natural selection favors genes that control their survival machines in such a way that they make the best use of their environment. This includes making the best use of other survival machines, both of the same and of different species." - Richard Dawkins

"I don't think that a leader can control to any great extent his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"Well, you can just stop and think of what could happen if anybody with a decent system of government got control of that mainland. Good God... There'd be no power in the world that could even" - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"Never let money control you. I'd rather see someone spend every red cent and relish his/her life than scrimp, obsess, and pinch the pennies. There's something repugnant about a person who centers his life around money." - Rita Mae Brown

"I am here tonight for the purpose of defending your right to differ with me. I want to convince you that you are under no compulsion to accept my creed; that you are, so far as I am concerned, absolutely free to follow the torch of your reason according to your conscience; and I believe that you are civilized to that degree that you will extend to me the right that you claim for yourselves. I admit, at the very threshold, that every human being thinks as he must; and the first proposition really is whether man has the right to think. It will bear but little discussion, for the reason that no man can control his thought. If you think you can, what are you going to think tomorrow? What are you going to think next year? If you can absolutely control your thought, can you stop thinking? The question is, has the will any power over the thought? What is thought? It is the result of nature--of the outer world--first upon the senses--those impressions left upon the brain as pictures of things in the outward world, and these pictures are transformed into, or produce thought; and as long as the doors of the senses are open, thoughts will be produced. Whoever looks at anything in nature, thinks. Whoever hears any sound--or any symphony--no matter what--thinks. Whoever looks upon the sea, or on a star, or on a flower, or on the face of a fellow-man, thinks, and the result of that look is an absolute necessity. The thought produced will depend upon your brain, upon your experience, upon the history of your life. One who looks upon the sea, knowing that the one he loved the best has been devoured by its hungry waves, will have certain thoughts; and he who sees it for the first time will have different thoughts. In other words, no two brains are alike; no two lives have been, or are, or ever will be the same. Consequently, nature cannot produce the same effect upon any two brains, or upon any two hearts. The only reason why we wish to exchange thoughts is that we are different. If we were all the same, we would die dumb. No thought would be expressed after we found that our thoughts were precisely alike. We differ--our thoughts are different. Therefore the commerce that we call conversation." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

"People have to be responsible for their thoughts, so they have to learn to control them. It may not be easy, but it can be done." - Rolling Thunder, born Louis Belmont Newell NULL

"eight keys or ways you can build a more intimate and mutually fulfilling heart-to-heart relationship: 1. Seek to become a really good heart-centered listener. 2. Share gratitude and heartfelt appreciation. 3. Small kindnesses reap large dividends. 4. Keep your agreements. 5. Take responsibility for your own upset. 6. Celebrate your own and each other's successes. 7. Resist the urge to complain about your partner with your friends or family. 8. Develop and maintain supportive and mutually agreed upon ground rules and guidelines. And now, here are an additional four keys we've found that work wonders: 1. Be willing to give up personal space. 2. Prize your partner. 3. Touch with love. 4. Your job is not to fix, change, manipulate, or control your partner -- your job is to love them. " - Ron and Mary Hulnick, formally H. Ronald Hulnick and

"What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring, That my songs do not show me at all? For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire, I am an answer, they are only a call. " - Sara Teasdale, born Sara Trevor Teasdale, aka Sara Teasdale Filsinger

"Internalized experiences of selfhood are linked to autobiographical narratives, which are linked to biographies, legal testimonies, and medical case histories, which are linked to forms of therapy and theories of the subject." - Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny

"A people free to choose will always choose peace." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"America has begun a spiritual reawakening. Faith and hope are being restored. Americans are turning back to God. Church attendance is up. Audiences for religious books and broadcasts are growing. And I do believe that he has begun to heal our blessed land." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan