When you let go of control and commit yourself to happiness, it is so easy to offer compassion and forgiveness. This propels you from the past, into the present. People that are negative, spend so much time trying to control situations and blame others for their problems. Committing yourself to staying positive is a daily mantra that states, “I have control over how I plan to react, feel, think and believe in the present. No one guides the tone of my life, except me!

The people’s silence is a tyrant’s greatest advocate. The less captives talked, the less they knew; the less they knew, the more they feared; and the more they feared, the more easily others could manipulate them to their own ends, the more easily the captives could be controlled.

The more we're thrown into conflict with each other through engineered distrust, the less able we are to unite against those responsible.

People turned against each other cannot turn against those responsible.

When you accidentally assert power over someone or something, one of two things will happen: 1) you will be respected; or 2) you will be hated

Having no need to judge, control, react, so forgiveness does not even arise.

The pursuit of goodness leads to greatness, but the pursuit of greatness, whether by a man or a nation, leads to ruin…. [G]ood men build; great men destroy. They destroy because they try to control something other than themselves and that always leads to destruction.

When people are vulnerable to control, they feel that they are selfish for deciding what to do with their own property. In reality, deciding for ourselves is the only way we can ever have true love, for then we are giving freely.

True love is built on free will and free choice, not control and manipulation.

Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.

A bird cannot love freely when caged.