External Forces Quotes

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

To exist without purpose is to be at the mercy of the chance encounter, the chance invitation, the chance phone call, the chance event- always being controlled by forces external to oneself.

There are absolutely ways to manipulate behavior, because our behavior is endlessly being manipulated by the world around us.

...the plan will happen in spite of us, not because of us.

The arts have a development which comes not only from the individual but also from a whole acquired force, the civilization which precedes us. One cannot do just anything. A talented artist cannot do whatever he pleases. If he only used his gifts, he would not exist. We are not the masters of what we produce. It is imposed on us.

This is how I feel about everything that's out of your control: once you make a record, it's not yours anymore. There's nothing you can do. It's the way I feel about political movements - both of those things grow on their own.

Which way will the sunflower turn surrounded by millions of suns?

Well, your whole life is like a checkerboard and there's a sense that you get, especially looking back on it, that you begin to realize and gain awareness that there's something else moving all of these pieces around in your life, and that was really true for me right from the very beginning.

Fate is not in man but around him

My friend wants to get moving and so do I,' Eddie said. 'We've got miles to go yet.' I know that. It's on your face, son. Like a scar.' Eddie was fascinated by the idea of duty and ka as something that left a mark, something that might look like decoration to one eye and disfigurement to another. Outside, thunder cracked and lightning flashed.

The darkness is really out there. It's not something that's in my head, just. It's in my work because it's in the world.

How did I get here? Somebody pushed me. Somebody must have set me off in this direction and clus-ters of other hands must have touched themselves to the controls at various times, for I would not have picked this way for the world.

Anyone has outside influences. They are the results of the cosmic roll of the dice: this person is born Aragon the Ranger, this person is born a prisoner in North Korea, this person is born Carlos the Dwarf. Some of these things are out of our control, but that doesn't mean that they can't be changed. A character, just like a person in real life, is a summation of her actions and feelings. Our actions and emotions are not performed against nothing, they do not arise from dust, we are in constant friction, and/or flow with our surroundings.

Sometimes, it is an external force that makes you realize your real potential.

There is this thing called life. We live it, not as we intend or wish, but as we are driven on by forces outside and inside ourselves.

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.

Failures . . . believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances ... by things that happen to them ... by exterior forces.

Dont blame me, I was given this world, I didn't make it.

Ultimately, the human being is in the mercy of nature.

America needs to get over it. We can't control everything. We can't control the storms.

I think I'm less the writer than I'm the written.

When you have strings, everybody pulls you here and pulls you there.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

People are not born heroes or villains; they’re created by the people around them.

There can be no doubt ... of our dependence upon forces beyond our control. Primitive man was so impotent in the face of these forces that g , especially in an unfavorable natural environment, fear became a dominant attitude, and, as the old saying goes, fear created gods.