Confusion Quotes - Page 20

• Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Relative Value, Political, Democracy

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• The ability to experience and understand what others feel without confusion between oneself and others.

  Jean Decety

  Empathy, Ability, Feels

  Jean Decety (2012). “Empathy: From Bench to Bedside”, p.264, MIT Press

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• Then in October, Indian Summer, the air turned so soft, the sunlight so fragile, and each day's loveliness so poignantly doomed that even self-ignorance and restlessness felt like profound states of being, and he just wandered the empty beaches and misty headlands in a state of serene confusion and awe.

  David James Duncan

  Summer, Beach, Ignorance

  David James Duncan (2010). “The Brothers K”, p.401, Dial Press

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• Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.

  Charles de Lint

  Let It Go, Records, Goes On

  "The Ivory and the Horn: A Newford Collection". Book by Charles de Lint, 1995.

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• In a world where spiritual confusion is increasing, GodQuest helps bring clarity and conviction. This is a terrific resource for developing a solid foundation for faith.

  Lee Strobel

  Spiritual, Foundation, World

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• Friend, many and many a dream is mere confusion a cobweb of no consequence at all. Two gates for ghostly dreams there are: One gateway of honest horn, and one of ivory. Issuing by the ivory gate are dreams of glimmering illusion, fantasies, but those that come through solid polished horn may be borne out, if mortals only know them.

  Homer

  Dream, Two, Ivory

  Homer, Robert Fitzgerald (1963). “The Odyssey”, Anchor

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• Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we're central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we're separate from the universe (there's US and then, out there, all that other junk - dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we're permanent (death is real, o.k., sure - for you, but not for me).

  George Saunders

  Dog, Real, Clouds

  "George Saunders’s Advice to Graduates". 6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com. July 31, 2013.

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• Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf - seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

  George Saunders

  Medicine, Advice, Selfishness

  George Saunders’ Commencement Address at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, 6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com. July 31, 2013.

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• With mindfulness we have the choice of responding with compassion to the pain of craving, anger, fear and confusion. Without mindfulness we are stuck in the reactive pattern and identification that will inevitably create more suffering and confusion.

  Noah Levine

  Pain, Compassion, Choices

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• The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.

  Tom Robbins

  Reality, Water, Insane

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.77, Bantam

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• To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion − not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don't understand what your creation is up to.

  Paul Lockhart

  Inspiration, Math, Discovery

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• For many of us, sadly, the spirit of Christmas is "hurry". And yet, eventually, the hour comes when the rushing ends and the race against the calendar mercifully comes to a close. It is only now perhaps that we truly recognize the spirit of Christmas. (...) With all its temporal confusion, it may just help us to see that by contrast, Christmas itself is eternal.

  Burton Hill

  Christmas, Rushing, Race

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• Discovering what you really want saves you endless confusion and wasted energy.

  Stuart Wilde

  Focus, Energy, Want

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• A bruised heart that chooses to beat with a passion for God amid pulsing pain and confusion may just be the most expensive offering placed on the divine altar.

  Beth Moore

  Christian, Pain, Passion

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• There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars....But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable....It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Stars, Pain

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• I never asked you to earn me. I want only that you should need me. Your path is not one of merit. Bring the recurring desires of your mind to me, every time they emerge. They cannot shock me, for I willed them! Bring me your confusion, your fear, your craving, your anxiety, your inability to love the world, your hesitation to serve, your jealousy, all the deficiencies that defy your spiritual disciplines.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Depression, Spiritual, Inability To Love

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• Disagreement is a rare achievement, and most of what is called disagreement is simply confusion.

  John Courtney Murray

  Communication, Achievement, Disagreement

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• The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Sex, Honesty, Ignorance

  "Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male". Book by Alfred Kinsey, 1948.

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• Are we, finally, speaking of nature or culture when we speak of a rose (nature), that has been bred (culture) so that its blossoms (nature) make men imagine (culture) the sex of women (nature)? It may be this sort of confusion that we need more of.

  Michael Pollan

  Sex, Flower, Men

  Michael Pollan (2007). “Second Nature: A Gardener's Education”, p.97, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words "innovative" and "successful." Microsoft products are successful - they make a lot of money - but that doesn't make them innovative, or even particularly good.

  Robert X. Cringely

  Successful, Peculiar, Microsoft

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• The path of compassion leads to the development of insight. But it doesn't work to say, "Ready, set, go! Be compassionate!" Beginning any practice depends on intention. Intention depends on intuiting-at least a little bit-the suffering inherent in the human condition and the pain we feel, and cause, when we act out of confusion. It also depends on trusting-at least a little bit-in the possibility of a contented, satisfied mind.

  Sylvia Boorstein

  Pain, Compassion, Practice

  Sylvia Boorstein, Ph.D. (2007). “Pay Attention, for Goodness' Sake: Practicing the Perfections of the Heart--The Buddhist Path of Kindness”, p.23, Ballantine Books

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• Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any need to look back with confusion and doubt.

  Dalai Lama

  Philosophical, Doubt, Needs

  Dalai Lama (1994). “The Path to Enlightenment”, p.56, Shambhala

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• If men can be made to understand that society, with its rigid codes and stratifications, is in its confused infancy rather than in the apex of its development; if they can be made to understand that the conflicts and contradictions of society can only be resolved by scientific long-range planning-then we will succeed in maintaining what civilization we have and drive onward to greater culture.

  Joost Meerloo

  Confused, Men, Civilization

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• One of the jobs of art is to inspire discussion, and Brokeback Mountain certainly has done that. It's like a window and a mirror. You're looking through a window at lives you may or may not have experienced. But it's a mirror in the sense we've all felt lonely; we're all, at one time or another, looking for and hoping for love.

  Diana Ossana

  Lonely, Art, Jobs

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The facts of the present won't sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter and confusion.

  William Macneile Dixon

  Portraits, Facts, Clutter

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