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Control — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Notable quotes

“Anarchism...rests upon the doctrine that no man has a right to control by force the action of any other man.”
— Lyman Abbott, "The Cause and Cure of Anarchism" in The Outlook, Volume 70 (February 1902)
“Anarchy means an absence of law. Sociologically it is the modern theory which proposes to do away with all existing forms of government and to organize a society which will exercise all its functions without any controlling or directive authority.”
— The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907)
“While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.”
— Charles Evans Hughes, in statement of May 1908, quoted in "Reauthorization of The Civil Rights Division of The United States Department of Justice" (15 May 2003) US House of Representatives.
“In the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged, in secret, a Master Ring to control all others. And into this Ring he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life. One Ring to rule them all.”
— Galadriel, in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), written by Frances Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, based on The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
“The Trickster represents the quality of randomness and chance in the universe, without which there could be no freedom. In the Craft the Goddess is not omnipotent. The cosmos is interesting rather than perfect, and everything is not part of some greater plan, nor is all necessarily under control. Understanding this keeps us humble, able to admit that we cannot know or control or define everything.”
— Starhawk, in The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979), p. 231
“If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”
— Howard Zinn, as quoted in Seeds of Revolution : A Collection of Axioms, Passages and Proverbs (2014) by Iam A. Freeman, Vol. 1, p. 587

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

Overview

Control is a fictional character created by John le Carré based on the real codename for the head of MI6. Control is an intelligence officer who acts as the head of the British overseas intelligence agency (nicknamed "The Circus" after its location in Cambridge Circus, London). He is a character in the novels The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and is referred to in several others, usually by association with le Carré's recurring protagonist George Smiley, who has served as Control's right-hand man. "Control" is a nom de guerre; the character's real name is never given, and it is suggested that he successfully kept his true identity secret even from his inner circle of advisors. His wife believes him to be a minor civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. In the original screenplay for the film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley muses that Control had once told him that Howard Staunton was the greatest chess master Britain had ever produced. "Staunton" later turns out to be the name that Control used for the rental of a flat he uses. The real chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (the equivalent of Le Carre's Circus) is known by a similar name: "C". This originates from the initial used by Captain Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, RN, an early chief of the service, who signed his letters "C" in green ink. This custom has been upheld throughout the history of the service. In the novels Control does not appear in the first two George Smiley novels. In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, le Carré's third novel, Control is already chief of the Circus, a position which was occupied by a civil servant named Maston, with whom Smiley clashed, in the first novel. Although he makes only comparatively fleeting appearances in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Looking Glass War, in both novels Control is depicted as a master strategist who orchestrates a successful intelligence operation for the Circus. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold also shows him as quite ruthless, concealing from his own agent Alec Leamas the true aim of the operation on which Leamas was sent to East Germany, and having – against Leamas' express wish – got Leamas' beloved, Liz Gold, deeply involved in his plot, eventually leading to her death.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).