Top 170 Controlling Quotes

The whole thing about writing a play is that it’s all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to the audience. It’s a stream of information, but you’ve got your hand on the tap, and you control in which order the audience receives it and with what emphasis, and how you hold it all together.

After the Democrats shoved the 2700 pages of ObamaCare down our throats – and we did find out how expensive, controlling, and coercive the legislation was – a majority of Americans wanted the Supreme Court to toss it aside as unconstitutional.

The pro-life movement is and has been led by women for decades. The history of the movement shows this, despite the current narrative about men ‘controlling’ or making laws about women’s bodies.

Hitchcock’s got a very interesting voice; it’s a very controlled, measured rhythm that’s quite slow and, in that sense, also felt quite controlling in its pace. He retained something from his childhood, that London sound, as well as adopting some of the L.A. sounds… All of this helps you create the character.

I’ve never been crazy when it comes to controlling my diet. I just avoid processed foods, don’t mix carbs and make sure I get my protein. I’m a carnivore. I love my wild game and especially my buffalo meat.

You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as you dominant aspiration.

So much of boxing is to do with your mental state. Evander Holyfield talks about spirit. I definitely have that spirit and feel like I’ve got something special inside me. It’s about me bringing it out, controlling it and using it to become world champion.

I believe in the potential of all things possibly imagined that can be made into a reality. My uncle was a Swedish scientist, and in the 1970s, he would speak of computers controlling most things in the future and self-driving cars and wireless communication. All the things that we are living with now.

There’s no controlling Billie – she’s an authentic person. She’s strong-willed and speaks her own mind, but she also listens to reason.

Maybe you could call me a little controlling or I like things to be my way, but since I was a little girl, I’ve known what I wanted. I’m very rootsy, but it really hadn’t ever caused me too much strife. I really know when to say when. I’m not too outward but I’m very honest.

I’m not jealous, and I’m not possessive, and I’m not controlling.

Controlling President Trump seems incredibly difficult.

I love hitting the ball, controlling the ball. And yeah, even the roar of the crowd. I enjoy the roar of the crowd probably less than some players and more than some. But I’m not out here to be a celebrity.

There’s so many things you can’t account for that can happen during each race. I just focus on controlling what I can.

It actually makes perfect sense why women in Hollywood get so skinny: because it’s a way of controlling how people see you.

I’m controlling over anything I create. I’m very precious about it.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.

Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure.

Look at what happened in the 1990s: when they balanced the federal budget, it was through growth in the economy and controlling spending.

A leader who is confused or confusing causes too much anxiety, and a leader who is too controlling is revealing more insecurity and a lack of leadership.

I was kind of surprised to learn how controlling I am. I never thought of myself in that way. I think the root of the control issues is usually fear, because you want to know what’s going to be happening at any given moment.

I keep my mind on track, and I don’t get mad, and I don’t get frustrated. Well, I do… but creative work, it’s a way of controlling all that.

I guess if I get a little weird about something that isn’t the way I want it, and I complain, then it’s called controlling.

I have serious adult acne, am almost legally blind and have to work at controlling my weight.

My art is not limited to the songs I create but also to the reaction it creates. I like to sit back and look at the whole thing as if it’s a tornado that I’m controlling. It’s creating chaos. When you create chaos, ideas are turned upside down, and everybody looks at things in a different way.

For me, it’s about controlling what I can control. I can’t control where I’m going to be put on the pitch. I can only control my effort and my ability to embrace anything thrown at me.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

Now is the most exciting time in fashion. Women are controlling their destiny now, the consumer is more knowledgeable, and I have to be better every single day.

The U.S. and Britain are incapable of controlling all of Iraq.

Among the many important provisions in the energy bill are the creation of an estimated half million new jobs, increased oil production, blackout protection, controlling fertilizer costs by stabilizing natural gas prices and enacting new efficiency benchmarks.

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

It is in American and Afghan interests for the U.S. to stay in Afghanistan so it doesn’t turn into Iraq circa 2014, with the Taliban controlling much of the country while hosting a strong presence of ISIS and al-Qaeda as well as every other jihadist group of note.

I think a lot of times people look at me and say, ‘Well, we can’t possibly hand a show over to her to run.’ It seemed like executives would be worried about me controlling a room and having power, and I’d say, ‘Oh, I can control a room. I can give an order like nobody’s business.’

I think the kind of person that gravitates toward New York is a person that’s not so much focused on controlling exactly how they appear and how they exit. They’re more fascinated with the process.

I think sometimes my controlling instincts came out of a fear of other people.

The Israeli lobby has clout in the U.S., which means that re-arranging the region and controlling its resources one way or another, will serve Israel through its control over the American administration.

In my life, things have happened to me. I’ve never felt I was controlling anything.

Business is fun. Controlling your own destiny is fun. Creating an idea and turning it into a movie; finding an artist and guiding their career and bringing them to some type of status – there’s joy in that.

A lot of coaches make it harder than it should be. Some are too hard on themselves, obsessing about controlling everything, not trusting their assistants, worrying about time.

If we become aware of what’s happening before we act, behaviour becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.

There was time I was 105 kg, and whenever I used to see myself in the mirror, I used to ask myself, ‘What is this?’ So there was only one solution and that is controlling your diet and then hit the gym.

The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life.

The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.

To make sense of bossiness, we need to tease apart two fundamental aspects of social hierarchy that are often lumped together: power and status. Power lies in holding a formal position of authority or controlling important resources. Status involves being respected or admired.

All religions, if you shrink them down, are all about controlling women’s sexuality.

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.

I really have no anxiety about controlling my own life.

Black people need to share collective dollars and demand equal representation, and the way you do that is by controlling their own economy and putting money behind candidates.

I felt in a lot of instances I was deliberately being put through stress because when you’re a guy who generates money, people have a vested interested in controlling you.

Economics and finance is the final frontier for women; it’s the last thing they will conquer because controlling finance is at the heart of everything in government.

If you believe in astrology, I’m a Virgo, so I’m very controlling; I’m very neat, and I’m very organized.

One of the things that made the Internet so explosive and such an economic and intellectual force is because of the free-market enterprise in a country like the U.S. controlling access to it.

In the future, I think movies are going to be more of data sets that viewers have a hand in controlling – where the narrative originates and what happens to the content.

We think we can control life by controlling our immediate circumstances. But we can’t!

One of the really remarkably beneficial aspects of genetic engineering is that much of the previous methodology for controlling pests and so forth is through chemicals that affect a very broad spectrum of insects, for example, or fungicides that control fungi.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

We humans actually need help controlling our impulses – nudges.

In Britain, the big supermarkets dominate our food chain. British supermarkets are some of the best in the world at controlling, manipulating and delivering cheap food.

I am a terrible mixture of being organized, controlling, but chaotic. My desk is monstrous.

All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That’s why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.

Directors didn’t want to work with me because I was ‘too controlling.’ If it had been a man, it wouldn’t have meant a damn thing.

The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it’s easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.

Cruyff’s idea was, quite literally, to play football – nothing more, nothing less. His idea of how football should be played was based not on controlling the opponent, but on the ball and the game.

There’s nothing more powerful than stand-up. Crushing with your own material, with your own energy, controlling an audience: There’s no better high. It’s awesome.

My dad was really controlling and he did want me to skate every single day. I would say he did it in a little bit of a strict way, which probably wasn’t necessary because bottom line I loved skateboarding and that’s all I wanted to do anyway.

It was Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ in, what, ’89, I think? What we could see was there was someone behind the curtain controlling all of this, and you could see it from one Tim Burton film to the next, that the guy who made ‘Edward Scissorhands’ also made ‘Batman.’ You could connect the dots because his style was so distinct.

The Internet is the hope of an integrated world without frontiers, a common world without controlling owners, a world of opportunities and equality. This is a utopia that we have been dreaming about and is a world in which each and every one of us are protagonists of a destiny that we have in our hands.

To be called a sovereign nation, a nation has to be able to control its own borders. It is controlling your own destiny in a way, and we don’t control our own borders.

When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education.

In medicine as well as in romantic poetry, it is the heart that is the center and controlling mechanics of life. If the heart stops, life stops. The loss of sight doesn’t not mean death. Yet for ages, the eyes was believed to contain a human being’s vital essence – a not wholly irrational belief.

The only time I’m relaxing is when I have the puck and controlling the puck. If I don’t have it, I’m getting anxious, and I want to have it.

There are times I’m approaching turns with my right hand on the brake lever, I’m downshifting with my fingers, I’m controlling the throttle with my left hand and steering into the corner with only one hand on the wheel. I feel a bit like Jimi Hendrix: I play with both my hands.

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.

As a director, there is nothing more fun than seeing an audience screaming and jumping. You are the ultimate puppet master, controlling the emotions of the audience.

Obama cannot erase the Second Amendment without crippling or controlling exercise of the First Amendment.

It really bothers me when a guy is controlling. Don’t just say ‘I’m picking the place’ – ask me where I want to go!

In traditional societies, we have a long legacy of men controlling the body and mind of women. Such societies have valorised motherhood and fabricated concepts like chastity. Women have been the victims of these notions for thousands of years.

When I started out in fashion, everything had to be very structured and tight and controlling, and now I’m getting to a point where I think – I could wear a great big parka, that could be quite fabulous. I haven’t always got to show off my size, show off my shape. It’s a turning point for me.

The Libertarian position on the freedom of speech is a strong support of freedom of speech, and we oppose government intervention in controlling what is or is not moral.

Everybody who stands against Donald Trump are the people who have been running the country into the ground, who have been controlling the levers of power. They’re the people who are responsible for our open borders, for our shrinking middle class, for our terrible trade deals.

There’s a lot of thought that bitcoin will be a huge threat to existing tax systems or existing ways governments have of controlling currency flows across their border. I personally think governments will do what governments have always done: they will adapt.

It’s difficult to admit to ourselves that we suffer. We feel humiliated, like we should have been able to control our pain. If someone else is suffering, we like to tuck them away, out of sight. It’s a cruel, cruel conditioning. There is no controlling the unfolding of life.

You have to protect it too, you can’t let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don’t believe in being so rigid about controlling what happens either.

You can’t be controlling in improv.

If I fell into one relationship after another with men who were either emotionally tuned out and unavailable or hotheaded and controlling, or both, it was because I was lacking in good sense about men.

I don’t think we can do anything about controlling what our climate is.

Money is not of the devil. It depends on who’s controlling it.

My father was overbearing. Very controlling. He was always the way he is, even before my success. He was not always a good person. He’d play mind games to make sure I knew my place. I don’t see him, which is unfortunate. But I don’t have any desire to see him. I vaguely know where he is, and I don’t want to know.

Any ‘network neutrality’ rule should be designed to forbid phone or cable companies from controlling the Internet.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

I always feel like the odd mom out, because trust me when I tell you I’m on my girls. And every time I am, I know from the outside it looks like I’m an overbearing, controlling parent. But I don’t think we have any responsibility to anybody else but our kids and ourselves.

In football you need opponents, competition because if you are alone with two or three clubs controlling everything you don’t have any competition.

You don’t always just have to do an indie movie to feel like you’re controlling it with a few people that you really have connected with, creatively. You can do it on a bigger scale.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

My main efforts focussed on trying to identify the rate controlling steps during the cell cycle. Crucial for this analysis were wee mutants that were advanced prematurely through the cell cycle and so divided at a reduced cell size.

When it comes to controlling human beings, there is no better instrument than lies. Because you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.

Post-lockdown period, not just shoots, I think the world is going to change in many ways. In shootings, maybe Covid-19 test results will be mandatory, social distancing will be the norm, as will controlling manpower.

I try to think of myself as a lion, bringing down the kill, controlling the jungle. A lion controls his jungle.

Schools still operate as if all knowledge is contained in books, and as if the salient points in books must be stored in each human brain – to be used when needed. The political and financial powers controlling schools decide what these salient points are.

Widespread use of antibiotics promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance. Smart use of antibiotics is the key to controlling its spread.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

If the British Fleet were lost or captured, the Atlantic might be dominated by Germany, a power hostile to our way of life, controlling in that event most of the ships and shipbuilding facilities of Europe.

Just when you think you’ve got your kids figured out, they change on you. For somebody who’s controlling, you can’t control it. Of course, I don’t think I’m controlling, but that’s what I’ve been told!

When you talk about fantasy, the usual problem is that whilst you’ve got the world of imagination, there are no controlling forces.

As a director or writer, you have to be so controlling.

Heaven has given to every human being the power of controlling his passions, and if he neglects or loses it, the fault is his own, and he must be answerable for it.

It’s a controlling thing on stage – you’re directing the action, getting people to play their role. In real life, I take being kind and nice seriously, so the last thing I’d ever want to be is that weird, controlling, manipulative character.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

Corporations always are controlling things, and we have the ability every day to do something about that. Every day.

I’m living on this positive mind frame where I’m only attracting positive things. I’m controlling my energy, I’m eating right, I’m meditating, I’m in the gym, I’m doing all this stuff I’m supposed to be doing. I’m past that young, immature way of thinking. I just want to be great.

You are controlling because I want you to do it, not because of the situation or what needs to be done.

It’s easier to get into controlling relationships when you’re young because you’re much more eager to please, and controlling men pick up on that. If they like to make decisions for you at the start of a relationship, it can be a warning sign.

To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne.

It’s when the conservationists became environmentalists that everything went bad. It stopped being about the environment. It became about controlling society.

We have to cut out some of our mistakes, but the main thing in English football is controlling the second ball. Without that, you cannot survive.

Are we controlled by our thoughts, or are we controlling our thoughts?

When 8chan came back online, it was extremely unstable. I was trying to post on it to see if it worked. And it was not working at all for me, but somehow, Q’ was posting. And that was kind of the moment for me that sealed the deal If they had not already been controlling it before, they were controlling it now.

I had no intention of being a film producer, and I knew I wasn’t passionate about engineering. I was always set on having my own business, controlling my own destiny.

So many of these decisions are made in a vacuum with a bunch of men sitting around a table deciding what a woman’s rights should be, what our access to health care, trying to control women by controlling our bodies.

I realised that if you get yourself labeled as the funny one, people don’t look any further. I’ve used that as I’ve got older. It’s controlling: I decide what part of my personality you’re seeing. I don’t want you to look at me, I really don’t. I don’t want you to comment on my clothes, my hair or the way I look.

What the Court really has refused to recognize is the fundamental interest all individuals have in controlling the nature of their intimate associations.

No one thinks of controlling inflation of a continental-sized country by holding back municipal tariffs. Macroeconomic stability cannot be achieved through microeconomic intervention.

Sure, I got lost, which is an actor’s worst nightmare. But it is a gift as well, because great things come out of being lost and unsure, especially if you have a controlling side or a perfectionist side, which plenty of us do.

I’m a constant idiot in conversation – I always seem to sound either smug or stupid. Writing plays was a way of winning the conversation by controlling the conversation.

I often say fame is kind of like a drug or like sugar: when it’s controlling you it doesn’t feel good at all.

It is my dream to have a controlling stake of Arsenal.

Dragon’s Lair 3D is about as close as you can come to controlling an animated feature film.

Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.

It was always my dream to be a director. A lot of it had to do with controlling my own destiny, because as a young actor you feel at everyone’s disposal. But I wanted to become a leader in the business.

I think that what went wrong with religion is the same thing that went wrong with politics. Is that it became too money based and too controlling. It’s just a weakness that we human beings have for control – we want one thing and then we want more and then we want more.

I actually find that Canadians are incredibly interested in democracy, and alarmed when they realize that the Prime Minister’s Office is controlling virtually everything that goes on within the federal government.

Yes, golf is a weird game. I was capable of dealing with moving and bouncing cricket balls, but this little silly ball, sitting on the ground, gave me quite a headache early on for few years, but taught me how to be disciplined in controlling the ball.

Historically, more media has been consumed sitting in front of the television than any other device. Controlling this screen has been the goal of major technology, consumer electronic, and telecommunications companies.

You have to do a good job controlling the things you can control for performance and not get distracted by all the noise.

I respect opinions, I don’t give opinions on them. I learnt to respect them. And I also have a very clear opinion on Rivaldo. He was a great player and the image that comes to me is of him controlling the ball on the chest and scoring in Barcelona. The most beautiful thing in this world. That’s my opinion.

When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it.

I always said that Messi has some talent that no one has. I mean, he has the ball and his speed controlling the ball. The ball doesn’t go two metres far from his foot; it’s always there. It’s impossible to catch him. This talent I didn’t see from anyone.

Sometimes it is a way of controlling others, including family members, because you don’t know how to connect to them in any other way. Money can also serve as a scorecard to indicate how well you are doing, the impact you are having, if you are winning.

In the 1960s, I personally lived the resounding impact of President Nasser’s vision of constructing Aswan’s High Dam as a ‘national project’ for controlling the Nile irrigation and the production of electricity.

Not a single illegal immigrant should or need enter the United States, not one. Contrary to the common wisdom, the borders are easy to seal, and controlling entry is hardly totalitarian.

It would be impossible for me to say when the idea of becoming an owner first came to me. Probably it was a gradual process. The first time the matter was brought to my attention in a concrete form, however, was when Charles Murphy was selling out his controlling interest in the Chicago Cubs.

Systems are complex, so controlling an attack and achieving a desired level of damage may be harder than using physical weapons.

I think there was a time when I was too strict and controlling. I think I asphyxiated my children.

The first two days that I rode a horse, I had someone controlling it with a rope around its neck.

Man, double-faced by nature, is placed by Revelation under a sharp, precise external rule, controlling his actions and his thoughts.

A lot of us have jobs where we need to give people structure but that is different from controlling.

I have spoken honestly about being born into a home where there was discord and chaos. I saw my mom have a rough time with my dad being very controlling, which is why I push back whenever I feel like someone is trying to box me in. It makes me run for the hills.

I don’t want anyone controlling me.

Bigger-budgeted films have more restrictions and less freedom to create. Because of this, I try to find freedom in the people I work with. I often work in ways I don’t want to. It’s more about controlling the situation. Lower-budget films are freer.

Money is hardly neutral. Its connection to power makes it a highly charged social phenomenon and a mediator of relationships. Because it has historically been controlled by men, it has given men a tool for controlling women.

The economy is governed through cartel agreements and monopoly. The attorney general is the one who’s controlling funds. There is no free business in Georgia.

Obamacare’s terrifyingly cumbersome, competition-hostile apparatus for controlling medical costs is one of its most obvious flaws.

Besides controlling my diet, I did functional training, weights, pilates and cardio everyday.

As far as natural calamities are concerned, Odisha had a very bad reputation before 2000 when we took over the government. After that, we have achieved international standards as far as controlling the effects of natural calamities. In fact, even the United Nations have complimented us on this.

When WWII ended, the Cold War started, and the interest of the Western world was not to completely break Germany. So all those Nazis who had been controlling the country now had the power to rebuild it. I think there were many of them who just continued their life in society; it’s a very known fact.

My way of coping with the day to day news cycle, which can be a lot, following every undulation of the news, I think it’s really psychologically harmful, so I check in, but I check in on a slower cycle. That’s my way of controlling my emotional response to fairly dark times.

I never feel like I’m in a rush. I’m controlling the pace. If I have the ball and hit the hole right now and get 3 yards, I feel like I can be patient, work for something, knowing I can still get the 3. It’s something that’s hard to be coached on. I just feel I’ve perfected it over time.

The concern is that Iraq could actually ultimately defeat ISIS, but Iran will have taken over the country, because it will be their military, their boots on the ground controlling the ground.

You control your behavior by controlling your thoughts.

I’ve always been obsessed with the grain of the human voice. It’s the ultimate instrument, there’s this whole level of virtuosity and poetry, a sort of athleticism, of controlling your voice.

It must be possible to solve the task of controlling nature and yet simultaneously create a new freedom.

Decades before we were able to articulate the value of ‘getting out of the building’ and the Lean Startup, the value in having skunk works controlling their own distribution was starkly evident.

I define socialism as the government controlling the means of production. I don’t think the answer to some of the big vesting problems we have in this country are to solve them entirely with a government-only solution.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.

I don’t care what political party is controlling China right now. All I know is we are all Chinese.

In America the schools have become too permissive, the kids now are controlling the schools, the tail is wagging the dog. We’ve got to make a change there and get it back to where the teachers have control of the classrooms.

Why can’t women get along? Because we’re afraid. We’re afraid to be vulnerable. We’re afraid to be soft. We’re afraid to be hurt. But most of all, we’re afraid of our power. So we become controlling and aggressive and vicious.

I definitely don’t want someone who’s controlling. I don’t want someone who feels like they can skirt around being supportive. To me, a partner is someone who has your back no matter what.

I am all for controlling guns.