Confusion quotes
695 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside confusion — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"In shamanism and certain yogas, Taoist yoga, claim very clearly that the purpose is to familiarize yourself with this after-death body, in life, and then the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche. You will recognize what is happening. You will know what to do. And you will make the clean break."
"[P]erfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he . . . introduces confusion and disorder into society . . . [thus] where licentiousness begins, liberty ends."
"Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these."
"I don't cause riots, but I do cause confusion. People freeze when they spot me."
"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."
"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."
"When the corpses are cleared no new order will emerge. Power, society, relationships, will descend in all their confusion on a new generation. The old, who started this conflagration, will retreat, worn out, the survivors and the young will continue the dance."
"Clear communication between selves - the surface self and the deep self - is the enemy of self-doubt. It slays confusion."
"Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you."
"The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you."
"You can blame your whole confusion on the fact that you bought illusion."
"I have many debates now with friends on the changes, and the continuing confusion over bringing up your children, instilling values, letting them make the right choices."
"If all simply insist on rights and no duties, there will be utter confusion and chaos."
"Yield and overcome; Bend and be straight; Empty and be full; Wear out and be new; Have little and gain; Have much and be confused. ...The ancients say, "Yield and overcome." Is that an empty saying? Be really whole, And all things will come to you."
"Nietzsche ... has caused [philosophers] so much confusion."
"Everybody calls "clear" those ideas which have the same degree of confusion as his own."
"Friendship maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts."
"The equivocations, the confusions, the contradictions. There's no way we can live through or comprehend something so big that happened so long ago. We've lost true history. But if we are willing to tolerate the contradictions, and if we suffer through events rather than ticking them off, we may at least get closer to understanding what happened than if we grip the handrail of a carefully polished and reassuringly heroic narrative."
"The job of the novel is to be true to the confusion, but not so confusing that you turn the reader off."
"A life without pain: it was the very thing I had dreamed of for years, but now that I had it, I couldn’t find a place for myself within it. A clear gap separated me from it, and this caused me great confusion. I felt as if I were not anchored to this world - this world that I had hated so passionately until then; this world that I had continued to revile for its unfairness and injustice; this world where at least I knew who I was. Now the world ceased to be the world, and I had ceased to be me."
