Control Illusion Quotes

Control was just wishful thinking, and you controlled things to hedge your bets, to be safe, to guard against loss.

Owning things is an obsession in our culture. If we own it, we feel we can control it; and if we control it, we feel it will give us more pleasure. The idea is an illusion.

The whole thing with comedy is that you are always in control. Writer, director, actor, producer, and sometimes bouncer. And you are just a piece of their puzzle.

People always get confused. They talk about coaches. The reality is, these coaches and managers that everybody thinks are in so much control, they work for us. They're our employees.

I am attracted to characters who think they are in control, but their situation is uncontrollable.

We usually think of ourselves as sitting the driver's seat, with ultimate control over the decisions we made and the direction our life takes; but, alas, this perception has more to do with our desires-with how we want to view ourselves, than with reality.

We don't have control over many things. We're always grasping for it, but in reality, we don't have a lot of control.

i know what it's like to wake up thinking you will be able to cast the people who play the starring roles in your life, only to realize that you have to watch it from the audience.

If you hold on to the handle, it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it's an illusory sense of control.

I think we are all insecure, and there is nothing wrong in accepting that. But the problem arises when we try to counter this insecurity by cultivating this illusion of control, and we start taking ourselves and everything we know too seriously.

I think paranoia goes from generation to generation. It's convenient to imagine that there's a few people controlling everything, that way it's manageable and small. But that's not life, life is messy.

You’ll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you’re still the one in control.

We are only puppets, our strings are being pulled by unknown forces.

Donald Trump is sitting on the control deck of the starship Enterprise, and he can push a lot of pretty buttons, but those buttons aren't connected to anything. And so nothing is happening.

The only ultimate power you have as a human being is over your choice to live or die. Everything else is chaos. If you try and think you have control over some of your life, essentially, that's the only real control you have, is whether you decide to exist.

Like looking down on a lubricious chess set, isn't it? The king moves in tiny steps, with no direction, like a drunkard trying to avoid the archer's bolt. The others work their strategies and wait for the old man to fall. He has no power, yet all power moves in his orbit and to his mad whim. Do you know there's no fool piece on the chessboard, Kent?" "Methinks the fool is the player, the mind above the moves.

No powers determine our lives more completely than those we think we have under our control. I

Life is a lot easier when you realize that you're not in control of it all.

Today, only a fool would offer herself as the singular role model for the Good Mother. Most of us know not to tempt the fates. Themoment I felt sure I had everything under control would invariably be the moment right before the principal called to report that one of my sons had just driven somebody's motorcycle through the high school gymnasium.

In the long run our boasted control of nature is a delusion.

Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing.

I finally understand that it’s okay to be a little afraid of things but that obsessing over them does not mean you have any more control over what you fear.

We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.