Confusion famous quotes

Out of evil comes good, however, and the confusion of tongues gave rise to 'the ancient practice of Masons conversing without the use of speech.'
-- A. E. Waite

#Practice #Evil #Confusion

I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest.
-- A. Whitney Brown

#Anger #Frustration #Confusion

I'm confused. Really, really confused.
-- Adam Gilchrist

#Confused #Confusion #Triplet

It's just funny that Americans have to contend with 2000 channels, and 60 different specific news sources, and the confusion that it creates, and the junk that we get to see is hilarious.
-- Adam McKay

#Confusion #Junk #Different

As soon as one point is removed from the sphere of dogmatic certainty, the discussion may not simply result in a new and better formulation, but may easily lead to endless debates and general confusion.
-- Adolf Hitler

#Media #Confusion #May

At any moment, we are either giving humanity the gift of our clarity or our confusion. And that clarity or confusion is affecting the humanity around us, the world around us. It is manifesting. It is taking form.
-- Adyashanti

#Giving #Confusion #Humanity

A world of confusion and disappointment results from trying to believe without obeying.
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer

#Disappointment #Believe #Confusion

The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you? You hold on to things causing your confusion. Let nature teach you. Hear the bird’s song then let go. If you know nature, you’ll know truth. If you know truth, you’ll know nature.
-- Ajahn Chah

#Letting Go #Song #Confusion

The mind is intrinsically tranquil. Out of this tranquility, anxiety and confusion are born. If one sees and knows this confusion, then the mind is tranquil once more.
-- Ajahn Chah

#Confusion #Anxiety #Mind

Classical cooking and molecular gastronomy should remain separate...you can mix two styles and get fusion; any more and you just get confusion.
-- Alain Ducasse

#Two #Confusion #Cooking

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
-- Albert Einstein

#Inspirational #Frustration #Confusion

When the Special Theory of Relativity began to germinate in me, I was visited by all sorts of nervous conflicts... I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
-- Albert Einstein

#Time #War #Confusion

When I see a head from a great distance, it ceases to be a sphere and becomes an extreme confusion falling down into the abyss.
-- Alberto Giacometti

#Distance #Fall #Confusion

The use of the polygraph has done little more than create confusion, ambiguity and mistakes.
-- Aldrich Ames

#Mistake #Confusion #Use

It is possible to resolve childhood repression safely and without confusion - something that has always been disputed by the most respected schools of thought.
-- Alice Miller

#School #Confusion #Childhood

We have taken the latter course as a culture. So there is mass confusion today--even in the evangelical church--over whether the Bible is true and over how far we should go in obeying it.
-- Alistair Begg

#Taken #Confusion #Church

History is the sextant of states which, tossed by wind and current, would be lost in confusion if they could not fix their position.
-- Allan Nevins

#Wind #History #Confusion

When the words are fuzzy, the programmers reflexively retreat to the most precise method of articulation available: source code. Although there is nothing more precise than code, there is also nothing more permanent or resistant to change. So the situation frequently crops up where nomenclature confusion drives programmers to begin coding prematurely, and that code becomes the de facto design, regardless of its appropriateness or correctness.
-- Amari Cooper

#Learning #Confusion #Design

In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.
-- Ambrose Bierce

#Names #Numbers #Confusion

PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme. . . . not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
-- Ambrose Bierce

#Confused #Differences #Confusion

OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.
-- Ambrose Bierce

#Confusion #Mind #Debtors

Lord Manu had said it's not people who are evil. True evil exists beyond them. It attracts people. It causes confusion amongst its enemies. But Evil in itself is too big to be confined to to just a few.
-- Amish Tripathi

#People #Evil #Confusion

As a reporter you tend to seek coherence from your subject or your source - it all needs to add up and make sense. In truth, in reality, there's often a great deal of murkiness and muddiness, confusion and contradiction.
-- Amy Waldman

#Reality #Confusion #Add

Fiction just has a lot more room for ambivalence and internal conflict, contradiction, and for me that sums up so much of what people felt after 9/11 - confusion even. And I think that's hard to capture in journalism.
-- Amy Waldman

#Thinking #People #Confusion

You live out the confusions until they become clear.
-- Anais Nin

#Confusion #Clear

The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.
-- Andre Breton

#Expectations #Confusion #Challenges

If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term "masterpiece" to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal.
-- Andre Malraux

#Artist #Perfection #Confusion

And seemingly as winter has become spring, confusion has become insight.
-- Andrew McMahon

#Spring #Winter #Confusion

I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.
-- Anna Kamienska

#Confusion #Understanding #Connections

I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death... I think... peace and tranquillity will return again.
-- Anne Frank

#Thinking #Confusion #Foundation

Grief is perhaps an unknown territory for you. You might feel both helpless and hopeless without a sense of a 'map' for the journey. Confusion is the hallmark of a transition. To rebuild both your inner and outer world is a major project.
-- Anne Grant

#Grief #Journey #Confusion

My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.
-- Anne Stevenson

#Laughing #Confusion #Unhappy

A place of solitude offers a retreat from the opposing forces and diverse demands of living, an entry into a state of peace and unity. Mind and body can retire from confusion and conflict to a sanctuary of clarity and harmony
-- Anthony Lawlor

#Confusion #Solitude #Mind

The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.
-- Archibald MacLeish

#Order #Law #Confusion

The primary aim of yoga is to restore the mind to simplicity and peace, and free it from confusion and distress
-- B.K.S. Iyengar

#Yoga #Confusion #Simplicity

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.
-- Barbara Amiel

#Ideas #Confusion #Progress

For those who confuse you, recognize that their confusion is theirs and your clarity is yours.
-- Barbara Marciniak

#Confusion #Clarity

The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion; and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology.
-- Basil Bunting

#Confusion #Psychology #Confusing

Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable to the writer or speaker who wants to be brief and pithy, but it can easily cause confusion and obscurity and must be used with skill.
-- Bergen Evans

#Writing #Skills #Confusion

Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable!
-- Bertolt Brecht

#Nature #Confusion #Humanity

Masturbation is a meditation on self-love. So many of us are afflicted with self-loathing, bad body images, shame about our body functions, and confusion about sex and pleasure, I recommend an intense love affair with yourself
-- Betty Dodson

#Sex #Self #Confusion

we use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness.
-- Bill McKibben

#Loneliness #Confusion #Use

The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.
-- Blaise Pascal

#Confusion #Unity #Tyranny

Those who cultivate moral confusion for profit should understand this: we will name their names and shame them as they deserve to be shamed.
-- Bob Dole

#Names #Confusion #Moral

I don't know how many sacred cows there are today. I think there's a little confusion between humor and gross passing for humor. That's kind of regrettable.
-- Bob Newhart

#Humor #Thinking #Confusion

How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal people in their normal confusion on a normal day may be a better indication of my reverence for life than the antiabortion sticker on the bumper of my car.
-- Brennan Manning

#Brother #Confusion #Car

Confusion is not an ignoble condition
-- Brian Friel

#Confusion #Ignoble

Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding...
-- Brian Greene

#Confusion #Understanding #Process

I feel very comfortable with the way I look, and I feel very comfortable with the kind of confusion that it creates in people's minds.
-- Brian Molko

#People #Confusion #Mind

What is a decision? It's a tool to remove confusion! Are you confused? If so, then make the decision and let's move on!
-- Brian Valentine

#Confused #Moving #Confusion

The automobile, both a cause and an effect of this decentralization, is ideally suited for our vast landscape and our generally confused and contrary commuting patterns.
-- Brock Yates

#Confused #Confusion #Landscape

I realize that if I were stable, prudent and static; I'd live in death. Therefore I accept confusion, uncertainty, fear and emotional ups and downs; because that's the price I'm willing to pay for a fluid, perplexed and exciting life.
-- Carl Rogers

#Emotional #Confusion #Pay

When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good. . . . When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.
-- Carl Rogers

#Responsibility #Confusion #Trying

It is astonishing how elements which seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens. How confusions which seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.
-- Carl Rogers

#Business #Healing #Confusion

The “Vasco da Gama's era” ends in a nightmare in which men-Westerners and non-Westerners alike-are bewildered by this confusion and the old fancy of the apprenti sorcier becomes tragically actual.
-- Carlo M. Cipolla

#Men #Confusion #Fancy

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

#Confusion #Understanding #Foundation

It was a well-known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to the moral ruin and confusion of the intellect.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Confusion #Ruins #Facts

Now, if I had an Indian name, it would be Stands in Confusion.
-- Caroline Lawrence

#Names #Confusion #Would Be

Intuitive guidance means having the self-esteem to recognize that the discomfort or confusion that a person feels is actually directing him to take charge of his life and make choices that will break him out of stagnation or misery. And, while we measure our own success in terms of our personal comfort and security, the universe measures our success by how much we have learned.
-- Caroline Myss

#Self Esteem #Mean #Confusion

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage

#Ideas #Two #Confusion

Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.
-- Charles de Lint

#Confusion #Let It Go #Records

The world so quickly adjusts itself after any loss, that the return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even the circle most interested, into confusion.
-- Charles Dudley Warner

#Loss #Circles #Confusion

Lately there have been complaints that the use of the magnitude scale is confusing, or at least the reporting of magnitudes in the newspapers 'confuses the public.
-- Charles Francis Richter

#Confusion #Confusing #Use

An apparent confusion, if lived with long enough, may become orderly . . . A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity
-- Charles Ives

#Long #Confusion #Unity

The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out.
-- Charlie Kaufman

#Writing #People #Confusion

I was in a tailspin of confusion I hadn't experienced since the first time I heard George W. Bush speak.
-- Chelsea Handler

#Confusion #Firsts #Speak

Without good communication, a relationship is merely a hollow vessel carrying you along on a frustrating journey fraught with the perils of confusion, projection, and misunderstanding.
-- Cherie Carter-Scott

#Communication #Journey #Confusion

Becoming "awake" involves seeing our confusion more clearly.
-- Chogyam Trungpa

#Confusion #Becoming #Awake

I know not how to defeat others, I only know how to win over myself. The real and most dangerous opponents we face in life are fear, anger, confusion, doubt and despair. If we overcome those enemies who attack from within , we can attain a sure victory over any attack from without.
-- Chris Bradford

#Real #Winning #Confusion

In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry.
-- Christopher Wren

#Respect #Confusion #Vices

We must not confuse distortion with innovation; distortion is useless change, art is beneficial change.
-- Chuck Jones

#Art #Confusion #Innovation

She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.
-- Clive James

#Confusion #Way #Abstract

Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.
-- Criss Jami

#Honesty #Confusion #Painful

If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue
-- Dalai Lama

#Life #Real #Confusion

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

#Philosophical #Confusion #Doubt

I always tell my Western friends that it is best to keep your own tradition. Changing religion is not easy and sometimes causes confusion. You must value your tradition and honor your own religion.
-- Dalai Lama

#Spiritual #Confusion #Honor

I like the confusion you get between science and religion … that’s where belief lies and art as well.
-- Damien Hirst

#Art #Lying #Confusion

I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.
-- Daniel Boone

#Inspirational #Confused #Confusion

I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion.
-- David Foster Wallace

#Thinking #People #Confusion

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 #Confusion

I like darkness and confusion and absurdity, but I like to know that there could be a little door that you could go out into a safe life area of happiness.
-- David Lynch

#Doors #Confusion #Darkness

I'm not comfortable with words. I love images ,and I love sounds, and I love feelings. I like the idea of intuition. I think a lot of things in life are understood that way. But you internalize these things; they don't really pop out. Certain things are built inside - little areas of understanding. I feel that I live in darkness and confusion, and I'm trying, like we all are, to make some sort of sense of it.
-- David Lynch

#Thinking #Ideas #Confusion

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me.
-- David Lynch

#Interesting #Confusion #Darkness

If you are experiencing confusion, pain, and suffering, it may be that God is working things out for you in his own way. It is most often the sovereign work of our God unfolding a master plan known only to him.
-- David Wilkerson

#Pain #Confusion #Suffering

When things are baffling they usually don't unbaffle themselves.There's just, you know, a certain amount of baffling stuff that always, like, really baffles you, and I've found that it's best to accept bafflement whenever it comes along, and then move on.
-- Dean Koontz

#Moving #Confusion #Stuff

You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.
-- Deb Caletti

#Book #Reading #Confusion

I noticed that there are no B batteries. I think that's to avoid confusion, cause if there were you wouldn't know if someone was stuttering. 'Yes, hello I'd like some b-batteries.' 'What kind?' 'B-batteries.' 'What kind?' 'B-batteries!' and D-batteries that's hard for foreigners. 'Yes, I would like de batteries.'
-- Demetri Martin

#Im Sorry #Thinking #Confusion

Social confusion has now reached a point at which the pursuit of immorality turns out to be more exhausting than compliance with the old moral codes.
-- Denis de Rougemont

#Sex #Confusion #Moral

The Mind cannot be confused, but it is confusion.
-- Dennis Merzel

#Buddhist #Confused #Confusion

When confronted by conflict and confusion, another practice is to take a deep breath, pause and ask: 'Where is the gift in this?
-- Diane Dreher

#Practice #Confusion #Conflict

Berlin is still going through a transition since the Cold War - both in what used to be East and West Berlin. I can still sense the confusion and the struggle for identity there in the streets. There's a pulse to it.
-- Diane Kruger

#War #Struggle #Confusion

If one were truly aware of the value of human life, to waste it blithely on distractions and the pursuit of vulgar ambitions would be the height of confusion.
-- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

#Ambition #Buddhism #Confusion

Let em' know that amidst all the confusion; some of us may do the winnin but.. We all do the losin, it's just who does the choosin
-- DMX

#Rap #Confusion #Doe

Ashton Ford will come as something of a surprise to those of you who have been with me over the years. This is not the same type of fiction that established my success as a novelist; Ford is not a gutbuster and he is not trying to save the world from anything but its own confusion. There are no grenade launchers or rockets to solve his problems and he is more of a lover than a fighter. I have grown, I hope, both as a person and as a writer, and I needed another vehicle to carry the creative quest. Ashton Ford is that vehicle.
-- Don Pendleton

#Years #Confusion #Creative

Forget the complaints against complexity; instead, complain about confusion.
-- Donald A. Norman

#Confusion #Complaining #Forget

Serious accidents are frequently blamed on "human error." Yet careful analysis of such situations shows that the design or installation of the equipment has contributed significantly to the problems. The design team or installers did not pay sufficient attention to the needs of those who would be using the equipment, so confusion or error was almost unavoidable.
-- Donald A. Norman

#Team #Errors #Confusion

Terminological infelicities have a way of breeding conceptual confusion.
-- Donald Davidson

#Confusion #Way #Breeding

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 #Confusion

In general, fire is used to throw enemies into confusion so that you can attack them.
-- Du Mu

#Fire #Confusion #Enemy

When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.
-- Eckhart Tolle

#Letting Go #Confusion #Ego