Chaos Quotes - Page 21

• I see the world in very fluid, contradictory, emerging, interconnected terms, and with that kind of circuitry I just don't feel the need to say what is going to happen or will not happen.

  Jerry Brown

  Justice, Needs, World

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• A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exit in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross sections cut through actions, snapshots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one, things in motion, motion in things.

  Ernest Fenollosa

  Eye, Cutting, Doe

  Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Jonathan Stalling, Lucas Klein (2008). “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition”, p.82, Fordham Univ Press

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• Probe the universe in a myriad of points. ... He is a wise man who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad of objects have each suggesting something, contributed something.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Taken, Animal

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.5, David M Gross

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• The motto of science is not just Pauca but rather Plurima ex paucissimis - the most out of the least.

  Mario Bunge

  Justice, Motto, Complexity

  "The Myth of Simplicity: Problems of Scientific Philosophy". Book by Mario Bunge, 1963.

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• The human mind can appreciate the One only by seeing it first in the Many.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Appreciate, Mind, Firsts

  Joseph Wood Krutch (2010). “The Desert Year”, p.268, University of Iowa Press

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• What is important is that complex systems, richly cross-connected internally, have complex behaviours, and that these behaviours can be goal-seeking in complex patterns.

  William Ross Ashby

  Goal, Important, Behaviour

  William Ross Ashby (1956). “An Introduction to Cybernetics. (1. Publ.)”

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• Unity is plural and, at a minimum, is two.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Two, Unity, Complexity

  R. Buckminster Fuller “Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity”, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• O Marvelous! What new configuration will come next? I am bewildered with multiplicity.

  William Carlos Williams

  Next, Complexity, Marvelous

  William Carlos Williams (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams”, p.36, New Directions Publishing

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• Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its humors, is also such a garden or such a pond.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Animal, Garden, Ponds

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• Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.

  Alan Watts

  Unity, Duality, Complexity

  Alan Watts (2017). “Psychotherapy East & West”, p.126, New World Library

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• The only way out is spiritual, intellectual, and emotional revolution in which, finally, we learn to experience first hand the interloping connections between person and person, organism and organism, action and consequence.

  Gregory Bateson

  Spiritual, Emotional, Hands

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• To understand the whole it is necessary to understand the parts. To understand the parts, it is necessary to understand the whole. Such is the circle of understanding.

  Ken Wilber

  Circles, Understanding, Complexity

  Ken Wilber (2004). “The Simple Feeling of Being: Visionary, Spiritual, and Poetic Writings”, p.200, Shambhala Publications

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• If you take care of the little things, the big things take care of themselves.

  Renford Reese

  Religion, Care, Littles

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• Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are the plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave.

  William Blake

  Hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Attention

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• The object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste things. Without them, - these sticks, stones, feathers, shells, - there is no Deity.

  Reginald Horace Blyth

  Smell, Religion, Looks

  Reginald Horace Blyth (1948). “Zen in English literature and oriental classics”

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• When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things.

  Alan Watts

  Mind, Religion, Looks

  Alan Watts (1989). “The way of Zen”, Vintage

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• Art can make chaos seductive.

  Mason Cooley

  Art, Seductive

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• Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.

  Novalis

  Self, World, Unions

  "Blüthenstaub". Book by Novalis, 1798.

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• Before the land rose out of the ocean, and became dry land, chaos reigned; and between high and low water mark, where she is partially disrobed and rising, a sort of chaos reigns still, which only anomalous creatures can inhabit.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Land, Water

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.768, Delphi Classics

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• I don't know much about death and the sorriest lesson I've learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone's dying.

  Alison Hawthorne Deming

  Dying, Comfort, Lessons

  Alison Hawthorne Deming (1994). “Temporary Homelands”

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• At my back I hear the word-"homosexual"-and it seems to split my world in two.... It is ignorance, our ignorance of one another, that creates this terrifying erotic chaos. Information, a crumb of information, seems to light the world.

  John Cheever

  Ignorance, Light, Two

  "The Journals of John Cheever" by Robert Gottlieb, 1966.

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• I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems.

  M. C. Escher

  Beautiful, Trying, World

  "Escher on Escher: exploring the infinite". Book by J. W. Vermeulen, H. N. Abrams, 1989.

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• Enchanting is not the word that would immediately spring to mind when describing a play that deals with fractal geometry, iterated algorithms, chaos theory and the second law of thermodynamics, but it is a perfect fit for Tom Stoppard's astonishing 1993 play, which is as beautiful as it is brilliant. This is one Stoppard drama that you don't have to be Einstein to understand -- you can feel it as well as think it. (...) Breathtaking, exhilarating and deeply satisfying.

  Lyn Gardner

  Beautiful, Drama, Spring

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• When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?

  Charlie Kaufman

  Distance, Writing, Emotional

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. November 22, 2008.

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• But I looked out at the waves far below the bluff. They looked violent, erupting against the cliff. I watched them rising - up, up, higher, higher - then falling, crashing, swirling into chaos, passing away. I breathed deeply. I tried to breathe space between my thoughts, find the space between the anger.

  Jaimal Yogis

  Fall, Rising Up, Space

  Mu Soeng, Jaimal Yogis (2010). “Saltwater Buddha: A Surfers Quest to Find Zen on the Sea (Large Print 16pt)”, p.37, ReadHowYouWant.com

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