We start by presenting some results on the stabilization, rapid or in finite time, of control systems modeled by means of ordinary differential equations. We study the interest and the limitation of the damping method for the stabilization of control systems. We then describe methods to transform a given linear control system into new ones for which the rapid stabilization is easy to get. As an application of these methods we show how to get rapid stabilization for Korteweg-de Vries equations and how to stabilize in finite time $1-D$ parabolic linear equations by means of periodic time-varying feedback laws.