Confusion Quotes - Page 28

• The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.

  Learned Hand

  Voting, Apathy, Voters

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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• It was a murky confusion — here and there blotted with a color like the color of the smoke from damp fuel — of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened.

  Charles Dickens

  Nature, Moon, Clouds

  Charles Dickens (1850). “The Personal History of David Copperfield0: In Three Volumes”, p.265

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• A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.

  John Dewey

  Essence, Discipline, Faces

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education: Top American Authors”, p.98, 谷月社

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• There is no appeal from the ways of the world, which must continue on its own terms or take us all down with it into chaos and confusion.

  Mark Van Doren

  Society, World, Way

  Mark Van Doren (1961). “The Happy Critic and Other Essays”

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• Oh, blank confusion! true epitome Of what the mighty City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity.

  William Wordsworth

  Son, Cities, Identity

  William Wordsworth (1994). “The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.698, Wordsworth Editions

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• In history as it comes to be written, there is usually some Spirit of the Age which historians can define, but the shape of things is seldom so clear to those who live them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Thoughtful, Men, Age

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• It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal.

  William Ernest Henley

  Artist, Raw Materials, Select

  William Ernest Henley (1921). “The Works of William Ernest Henley: Views and reviews”

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• I think that when you're writing fiction what you're doing is reflecting life as you see it, and putting down how you think and how other people think, and the sort of confusions that you don't normally like to admit to.

  Helen Fielding

  Writing, Thinking, People

  "Dumped Bridget, wrote spy novel". Interview with John Walsh, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2003.

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• My best works are erotic displays of mental confusions.. with intrusions of irrelevant information.

  Marlene Dumas

  Erotic, Information, Intrusion

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• What has happened here [aftermath of 9/11] is not war in its traditional sense. This is clearly a crime against humanity. War crimes are crimes which happen in war time. There is a confusion there. This is a crime against humanity because it is deliberate and intentional killing of large numbers of civilians for political or other purposes. That is not tolerable under the international systems. And it should be prosecuted pursuant to the existing laws.

  Benjamin B. Ferencz

  War, Numbers, Law

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• I think there's confusion around what the point of social networks is. A lot of different companies characterized as social networks have different goals - some serve the function of business networking, some are media portals. What we're trying to do is just make it really efficient for people to communicate, get information and share information.

  Mark Zuckerberg

  Thinking, Media, People

  "The Future of Facebook". Interview with Laura Locke, content.time.com. July 17, 2007.

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• The laws of Nature, that is to say the laws of God, plainly made every human being a law unto himself, we must steadfastly refuse to obey those laws, and we must as steadfastly stand by the conventions which ignore them, since the statutes furnish us peace, fairly good government, and stability, and therefore are better for us than the laws of God, which would soon plunge us into confusion and disorder and anarchy if we should adopt them.

  Mark Twain

  Government, Law, Anarchy

  Mark Twain (1973). “Mark Twain and the three R's: race, religion, revolution--and related matters”, Bobbs-Merrill Company

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• I also talk a lot in Deeper Reading about the importance that confusion plays. When my students come to me, they think confusion is bad. They are wrong. Confusion is the place where learning occurs.

  Kelly Gallagher

  Reading, Thinking, Play

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• The signs of good health are an intellect which is free from inhibition and arrogance, a heart which is full of compassion is healthy, a confusion-free mind, a trauma-free memory and a sorrow-free soul.

  Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

  Memories, Heart, Compassion

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• It is taught, we too can be enlightened, every one of us. We can be completely freed from the bonds of limitation and conditioned confusion through our own endeavor, inspiration, effort and development. There is a path, and we can traverse it.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Inspiration, Effort, Development

  "A True Refuge" by Sharon Salzberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 21, 2012.

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• Today, journalists more than any other cohort of professionals, are responsible for the confusion that surrounds power and its criminality in contemporary society. As Janet Malcolm said in another context, 'Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.'

  Martin Walker

  Stupid, Media, Doe

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• Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism - the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Class, Wings

  "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works".

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• He who studies it [Nature] has continually the exquisite pleasure of discerning or half discerning and divining laws; regularities glimmer through an appearance of confusion; analogies between phenomena of a different order suggest themselves and set the imagination in motion; the mind is haunted with the sense of a vast unity not yet discoverable or nameable.

  John Robert Seeley

  Running, Nature, Science

  "Natural Religion".

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• We watched each other evolve into parents, with all the fear, rage and confusion evolution can involve. Our eight-year-old is the incarnation of our union; we are forever fused by her blood. My old take on romance seemed vaguely ludicrous, as affected as a pair of spats. I no longer saw the point in 'getting back to normal', that pantomime of pretending nothing had changed; I wanted to evolve from sexual posturing into a deeper consciousness, that of love.

  Antonella Gambotto-Burke

  Love, Eight, Blood

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• One of the most difficult problems of our age is that leaders, and perhaps academics as well, cannot readily admit that things are out of control and that we do not know what to do. We have too much information, limited cognitive abilities to think in systemic terms and an unwillingness to appear to be in control and to have solutions for our problems. We are afraid that if we admit to our confusion, we will make our followers and students anxious and disillusioned. We know we must learn how to learn, but we are afraid to admit it.

  Donald Michael Kraig

  Learning, Thinking, Leader

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• Common sense told us that to preserve the peace, we'd have to become strong again after years of weakness and confusion. So, we rebuilt our defenses, and this New Year we toasted the new peacefulness around the globe. Not only have the superpowers actually begun to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons...but the regional conflicts that rack the globe are also beginning to cease.

  Ronald Reagan

  New Year, Strong, Years

  Farewell Address to the Nation, delivered 11 January 1989, Washington D.C.

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• Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness! They will not march farther for you, on the sixpence a day and supply-demand principle; they will not; nor ought they, nor can they. Ye shall reduce them to order, begin reducing them. to order, to just subordination; noble loyalty in return for noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh mad; let yours be sane and ever saner.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Loyalty, Order, Mad

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• Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Inspirational, Life, Silence

  Leonardo (da Vinci), Irma A. Richter, Thereza Wells (2008). “Notebooks”, p.9, Oxford University Press

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• To suffer one's confusion is the first step in healing.

  Robert A. Johnson

  Healing, Suffering, Firsts

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• In the play we have the messy he-loves-her, she-loves-him, she-loves-him-too structure, and, to add even more confusion to the mix, the real love story is between the two ladies.

  Norbert Leo Butz

  Real, Play, Two

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