Illusory Control Quotes

He's lived a fiction. And, of course, he thinks that if you love someone enough, they will love you. And that if you steer things enough, things will, under your control, come right. And this is the fiction of the controller: a controller thinks that they can control their life into being what they want it to be. But their life will never be what they want it to be until they stop controlling, and that is their journey.

We don't have a clue what's really going down, we just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives while a paper's thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they're tired, or bored.

I managed 26 years and found out when I retired I didn't own the game. I thought I owned it when I was managing all those years. You can climb to the top of the mountain, get down on your knees and kiss the ground, because you'll never own that mountain. That mountain is only owned by one single person, and he'll never give it up. That's the way baseball is.

Inexperienced girls flatter themselves with the notion that it is in their power to make a man happy.

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

One of the best ways of repressing emotions is artificial certainty.

People think they know what they want but they generally don't. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get it anyways.

I danced along a colored wind/ Dangled from a rope of sand

When I was 17 until, I don't know, 20, I had this massive, baseless confidence. This very clear idea of myself and how I would achieve success, which involved making decisions. I saw myself picking up the phone and saying 'Absolutely not' or 'Definitely yes.' Having control. Except you have to figure out whether the way you think at 19 or 20 has any value. And eventually I understood, with all that control, which was probably illusory, I wasn't progressing. So now I'm relinquishing a bit. I'll be a tiny bit naked.

In every story of solipsism, there is always a conspiracy. Why? Because there is always a background involved in every perception.

He who holds me by a thread is not strong; the thread is strong.

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

A man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.

Control is an illusion.