Power And Control Quotes

“Beauty loses value when it’s alone.”
― D.L. Maddox, Reckoning

“They are fully under our control and nowhere as powerful as the old AIs of the past. They’re individual machines and cannot control vast networks.”
”
― Max Nowaz, The Polymorph

“Another reason abusers don’t want to give up the ‘power’ is that they don’t want to give up the power.”
― Sara Niles, Torn From the Inside Out

“Money is nice, but the world is full of things that people would never sell. Favors and obligation are worth far, far more.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“You treat that Mama Abassi like your second mother," it had said. "But you don't ever wonder if she's just keeping you under control? Or even making use of your talents?”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Those who claim to be closest to God are furthest from Heaven.”
― Navonne Johns

“Traumatized children who grow up in households in which one dominant abuser takes all the power for himself, learn to identify with power as a special need, like a missing nutrient for their souls.”
― Sara Niles, The Long Suicide: Losing Ariel

“Why did the god of the Western Bible got annoyed when people were united, speaking the same language, and building a high tower together with zero hatred?

The god of the Western Bible divided the people and caused confusion amongst themselves ...dividing them into small tribes. Just like how the West did to the African continent.

History is mind-blowing.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Malamuth, Sockloskie, Koss, and Tanaka (1991) proposed a model of the characteristics of aggressors that suggests that coercive sex may be conceptualized as resulting from the convergence of (1) relatively high levels of ‘impersonal’ sex and (2) hostile, dominating characteristics… According to this model, the determinants of coercive sex can often be traced to early home experiences and parent–child interactions… Individuals experiencing this type of home environment may develop negative views of male–female relationships, which may foster a relatively impersonal orientation to sexuality, a hostile ‘schema’ about social relationships, or both.” (pp. 281–282)”
― David M. Buss, Sex, Power, Conflict: Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives

“War does not only kill men.
Sometimes it quietly takes away their future children.”
― Angelika Regossi, Love in Communism: A Young Woman's Adult Story

“The fear of AI isn’t that it will do what humanity does better —
it’s that it will do the worst of what we already do, better.”
― Lawrence Nault

“I have quite a few of ‘my own’ people now,” Stalin concluded, “but the very first day of the war revealed a lack of proper organization and coordination among them. Worse still, among these ‘my own’ there are plenty of fools — and traitors lying low. This filth must be eliminated as quickly as possible, because a new system of power can be built only if I do not fear for my rear.”
He turned back to the sheet of paper and wrote decisively:
“Immediately neutralize all spies and potential enemies.”
The General Secretary of the Communist Party raised his eyes to the ceiling. Images of former comrades — now exposed as traitors — flashed before his mind’s eye. Blood rushed to his face; beneath his habitual vigilance, rage began to surface.
Yes, I too had erred for too long, following the lead of Leninist–Trotskyist lackeys who believed the revolution could be exported by financing foreign anti-imperialist movements. Through these empty talkers, colossal resources had vanished abroad like water into sand — resources that should have gone into armaments. And time? Years lost. Years that were desperately needed now.
These double-dealers should have been destroyed immediately after Trotsky’s defeat — a barren breed capable only of parroting outdated ideas of long-dead leaders. At least now they were no longer underfoot, no longer pulling in opposite directions and tearing the system apart.
“Stop,” Stalin ordered himself. “I must not descend into emotion. That is unacceptable. What matters is drawing conclusions from my own miscalculations.”
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book One


Context note:
An internal monologue of Joseph Stalin during the first days of the German–Soviet War, a later and decisive phase of World War II. The passage reveals the core logic of Stalinist power: paranoia, purges, and the conviction that absolute control — rather than human life — is the true foundation of victory. It exposes how fear, repression, and ideological obsession shaped decision-making at the highest levels of the Soviet state.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга перша. Перші кроки до світла та назад: Дитинство та занурення в ГУЛАГ.