Confusion Quotes - Page 36

• Human beings being what they are, order spreads, given half a chance, almost as fast as confusion.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Order, Half, Chance

  Samuel R. Delany (2004). “The Fall of the Towers”, Vintage

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• No need for confusion, my dear Mulgrave... Beautiful wine and sour vinegar come from exactly the same source. Curiously if one leaves a bottle of wine open for long enough it will become vinegar. Happily in this house wine never survives long enough to go bad.

  David Gemmell

  Beautiful, Wine, Long

  "Stormrider". Book by David Gemmell, Ch.7, 2002.

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• Confusion is what we're living with - not being able to make sense of what's happening to us from day to day. Whereas making sense is what we're aiming for - making sense.

  Paul Muldoon

  Able, Make Sense, Day To Day

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• Does one get faith by mere studying of books? Too much reading creates confusion. The Master used to say that one should learn from the scriptures that God alone is real and the world illusory.

  Sarada Devi

  Real, Book, Reading

  "Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations" by Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, (p. 348), 2004.

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• Clericalism: the habitual confusion between that which is of Caesar, and that of God.

  Giulio Andreotti

  Habitual

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• There was something about the self-confession and self-confusion of Abstract expressionism - as though the man and the work were the same - that personally always put me off because at that time my focus was in the opposite direction.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Men, Self, Opposites

  "Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews". Book by Sam Hunter (p. 37), 2006.

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• Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.101, Random House

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• It's much harder to say "I'm going to kill three of the biggest characters in your universe in a gruesome bloodbath." There can be a lot of differing opinions in a mainstream comic book, you know? "Rogue would never do this!" But I can say, "No, Rogue suffered the death of Charles Xavier and it broke her down and she stumbled into a dark place and she started fixating on the Scarlet Witch as the cause of it all" — which, there is a logical chain of events that lead to the Scarlet Witch. And in the confusion, she thought Wanda was up to doing it again and she did what she thought was best.

  Rick Remender

  Book, Character, Dark

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• In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Running, Government, Evil

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.389

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• We live in a supermarket of ideas, faiths, practices, theories, ideologies, and much else besides. Never in human history have there been so many movements and ideas struggling to attract our attention. Added to this, the Western world is swamped by material goods and the Western mind is dominated by the goal of material success. In all this confusion, Zen stands out as a voice of sanity. It represents a different way of seeing the world, one based upon the rediscovery of who we really are and have always been, through revealing to us our true nature.

  David Fontana

  Struggle, Practice, Ideas

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• Behold, O Lord, that I am indignant with myself, for my senseless, profitless, hurtful, perilous passions; that I loathe myself, for these inordinate, unseemly, deformed, false, shameful, disgraceful passions; that my confusion is daily before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me. Alas! woe, woe! O me, how long?

  Lancelot Andrewes

  Passion, Long, Hurtful

  Lancelot Andrewes (bp. of Winchester.) (1883). “The private devotions of Lancelot Andrewes”

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• I knew, even at eight, that the confusion of values thrust upon me by parents, teachers, other children, nannies, camp counselors, and others would only worsen as I grew up. The years would add complications and steer me into more and more impenetrable tangles of rights and wrongs, desirables and undesirables. I had already seen enough to know that.

  Jean Liedloff

  Teacher, Children, Years

  Jean Liedloff (1985). “The Continuum Concept: Allowing Human Nature to Work Successfully”, p.5, Da Capo Press

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• What I like about narrative in general is when there is some incongruity between the form and content. Let's say, mixing up the gothic with a coming-of-age narrative. Telling a love story that's also a monster story. Mixing up superhero tropes with your monster tropes. I like category confusion.

  Kelly Link

  Superhero, Age, Mixing

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• Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals. We look away from government for relief, because we know that force (legalized) invades the personal liberty of man, seizes upon the natural elements and intervenes between man and natural laws; from this exercise of force through governments flows nearly all the misery, poverty, crime and confusion existing in society.

  Lucy Parsons

  Believe, Exercise, Men

  "The Principles of Anarchism". A Lecture by Lucy E. Parsons, lucyparsons.org.

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• We have the tendency to judge others by their surface appearance, and to find only their negative qualities. But if we search beneath the surface we discover that a myriad of strains mix together to create a particular person's nature. The faults we perceive are likely to be the effect of circumstances, the psychological response to trauma, abuse, rejection, heartbreak, insecurity, pain, confusion, or disease.

  Radhanath Swami

  Pain, Judging, Rejection

  "The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami". Book by Radhanath Swami, 2009.

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• The enemies of the Soviet state calculate that the heavy loss we have borne will lead to disorder and confusion in our ranks. But their expectations are in vain: bitter disillusionment awaits them. He who is not blind sees that our party, during its difficult days, is closing its ranks still more closely, that it is united and unshakable.

  Lavrentiy Beria

  Party, Loss, Expectations

  "The Current Digest of the Soviet Press". Issued by the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies, p. 9, 1953.

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• The precision provided (or enforced) by programming languages and their execution can identify lacunas, ambiguities, and other areas of potential confusion in conventional [mathematical] notation.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Execution, Language, Programming

  "Math for the Layman" by Kenneth E. Iverson, Ch. 10, §D, www.cs.trinity.edu. 1999.

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• The new coherent picture is not yet available. With all their immense empirical success, G(eneral)R(elativity) and Q(uantum)M(echanics) have left us with an understanding of the physical world which is unclear and badly fragmented. At the foundations of physics there is today confusion and incoherence.

  Carlo Rovelli

  Understanding, Today, Foundation

  "Quantum gravity". Book by Carlo Rovelli, 2004.

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• Attention is our first duty whenever we want to know what is our second duty. There is no such cause of confusion and worry about what we ought to do, and how to do it, as our unwillingness to hear what God would tell us on that very point.

  Henry Clay Trumbull

  Worry, Want, Firsts

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 197), 1895.

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• The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Fighting, Civilization

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• Believing in gods always causes confusion.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Believe, Causes, Believe In God

  Pearl S. Buck (2012). “Peony: A Novel of China”, p.28, Open Road Media

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• Often, in the student's confusion, she or he directs anger at the teacher, blaming them for the pain they are experiencing, or for their own mistakes.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Pain, Mistake

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• I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of cosmic order expressed by the "Law of Frequency of Error." The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement, amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason.

  Francis Galton

  Math, Errors, Self

  Natural Inheritance Normal Variability (p. 66)

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• Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.

  Edmund Burke

  Mean, Views, Government

  Edmund Burke, James BURKE (Barrister-at-Law.) (1854). “The Speeches of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, with Memoir and Historical Introductions. By James Burke”, p.75

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• ... an inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning, that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Fall, Use, Heat

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1824). “Works of Maria Edgeworth: Letters to literary ladies. Castle Rackrent. Leonora. Essay on Irish bulls. 1824”, p.40

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