Confusion Quotes - Page 29

• The only thing I can see in Jasper Dale's face is helpless and utter confusion.

  Hetty King

  Faces, I Can, Helpless

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• The onus is on us to determine whether free societies in the twenty-first century will conduct electronic communication under the conditions of freedom established for the domain of print through centuries of struggle, or whether that great achievement will become lost in a confusion of new technologies.

  Ithiel de Sola Pool

  Struggle, Communication, Technology

  Ithiel de Sola POOL (2009). “Technologies of Freedom”, p.10, Harvard University Press

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• Don’t accept the habitual as a natural thing. In times of disorder, of organized confusion, of de-humanized humanity, nothing should seem natural. Nothing should seem impossible to change.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Humanity, Impossible, Natural

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• Confusion sets in when you're not sure if your product or service is bought or sold, or worse, if you are a salesperson just waiting for people to buy.

  Seth Godin

  People, Waiting, Not Sure

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• The sun rarely shines in history, what with the dust and confusion; and when we meet with any cheering fact which implies the presence of this luminary, we excerpt and modernize it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Cheer, Dust, History

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.549, Simon and Schuster

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• The aphorism offers a momentary sense of mastery over some confusion or unhappiness.

  Mason Cooley

  Mastery, Unhappiness, Aphorism

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• Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Forgiving, Too Much

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.350, Modern Library

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• I appeal now to the convictions of the communicants, and ask such persons whether they have not been occasionally conscious of a painful confusion of thought between the worship due to God and the commemoration due to Christ.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Worship, Painful, Christianity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.106, Modern Library

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• It is not confused. We are.

  Mason Cooley

  Confused

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• History in the making is a very uncertain thing. It might be better to wait till the South American republic has got through withits twenty-fifth revolution before reading much about it. When it is over, some one whose business it is, will be sure to give you in a digested form all that it concerns you to know, and save you trouble, confusion, and time. If you will follow this plan, you will be surprised to find how new and fresh your interest in what you read will become.

  Anna Brackett

  Reading, History, Giving

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• Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Spring, Expression, Ideas

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.89, Editions Le Mono

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• Was none who would be foremost
  To lead such dire attack;
  But those behind cried "Forward!"
  And those before cried "Back!

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Would Be, Behinds, Cried

  Thomas Babbington Macaulay, “Horatius”

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• As restrictions and prohibitions are multiplied the people grow poorer and poorer. When they are subjected to overmuch government, the land is thrown into confusion.

  Laozi

  Government, Land, People

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• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. Fifty years on, I don't associate the book with anything that ever happened to me, save for one wordless encounter at London airport when a worn-out, middle-aged military kind of man in a stained raincoat slammed a handful of mixed foreign change on to the bar and in gritty Irish accents ordered himself as much Scotch as it would buy. In that moment, Alec Leamas was born. Or so my memory, not always a reliable informant, tells me.

  John le Carre

  Memories, Military, Book

  "John le Carré: 'I was a secret even to myself'". www.theguardian.com. April 12, 2013.

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• Man is a willful and covetous animal, who makes use of his intellect to satisfy his inclinations, but who cares nothing for truth, who rebels against personal discipline, who hates disinterested thought and the idea of self-education. Wisdom offends him, because it rouses in him disturbance and confusion, and because he will not see himself as he is.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Hate, Men, Animal

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• Who does more earnestly long for a change than he who is uneasy in his present circumstances? And who run to create confusions with so desperate a boldness as those who have nothing to lose, hope to gain by them?

  Thomas More

  Change, Running, Long

  Thomas More (2012). “Utopia”, p.20, Courier Corporation

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• When you enter deeply into this moment, you see the nature of reality, and this insight liberates you from suffering and confusion. Peace is already there to some extent: the problem is whether we know how to touch it.

  Nhat Hanh

  Peace, Nature, Reality

  Nhất Hạnh (Thích.), Thich Nhat Hanh (1997). “Living Buddha, Living Christ”, Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

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• [The] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so much confusion.

  Marianne Moore

  Stars, Loss, Sky

  Marianne Moore (1994). “Complete Poems”, p.5, Penguin

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• The elements were "seeking" each other in rage and confusion, and in the fury of the conflict boastful man was utterly humiliated, sucked down, drowned.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Loss, Men, Conflict

  Elizabeth Goudge (1944). “Green Dolphin Street”

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• There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Waste, Chaos, Appearance

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• Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics.

  Benjamin Haydon

  Newton, Mathematics

  Benjamin Robert Haydon (1853). “Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, historical painter”, p.340

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• There is, perhaps, one universal truth about all forms of human cognition: the ability to deal with knowledge is hugely exceeded by the potential knowledge contained in man's environment. To cope with this diversity, man's perception, his memory, and his thought processes early become governed by strategies for protecting his limited capacities from the confusion of overloading. We tend to perceive things schematically, for example, rather than in detail, or we represent a class of diverse things by some sort of averaged "typical instance.

  Jerome Bruner

  Memories, Men, Class

  Jerome Seymour Bruner (1979). “On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand”, p.65, Harvard University Press

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• It is the same with understanding as with eyes; to a certain size and make, just so much light is necessary, and no more. Whatever is beyond brings darkness and confusion.

  Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Eye, Light, Understanding

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• [T]his free and easy old-bachelor sort of life is quite full of fun and jollity. Pease and myself room together; and everything like order and neatness is banished from our presence as a nuisance--old letters and old boots and shoes, duds clean and duds dirty, books and newspapers, tooth-brushes, shoe-brushes, and clothes-brushes, all heaped together on chairs, settees, etc., in dusty and "most admired confusion." Now, what is there imaginable in clean, tidy private life equal to this?

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Fun, Book, Dirty

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• Learning to say prayers in a foreign language...is not in itself the way to fulfill our highest human potential; there is nothing of transcending value to be gained from substituting one set of cultural conventions for another. People whose practice remains on this superficial level end up with nothing but confusion, not knowing who they are or what they should do.

  Thubten Yeshe

  Prayer, Learning, Practice

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