Quotes about confusion (1305 quotes, page 9)

“Nature … has born and reared all men alike, and created them genuine brothers, not in mere name, but in very reality, though this kinship has been put to confusion by the triumph of malignant covetousness, which has wrought estrangement instead of affinity and enmity instead of friendship.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

79.
Every Good Man is Free

Men , Friendship , Nature , Reality

“A myth has it that in the Texas League some years back, Billy Williams hit a line drive so hard it broke the leg of a rival first baseman. The myth is total nonsense. Williams actually hit a one-bounce ground shot that broke the leg of a rival second baseman. When Billy Williams sets the record straight, he laughs, and tiny white lights glitter in his black eyes, like the tips of icepicks. You know," he says, "nobody likes to hurt anybody. But you have to think I hit that ball pretty good." This is the Billy Williams laugh. It is not a friendly laugh. It is the laugh of an arrogant hitter. Stan Musial used to giggle that way, and no one would confuse it with a girlish giggle. Ted Williams used to grin that way when he talked about hitting. Not a friendly grin; a wicked grin. That is Billy Williams' laugh. It is probably the way the legendary Billy the Kid laughed before he killed a man. Cold as the tip of an icepick. Not that Billy Williams is not a friendly man. He is. Very. He is one of the nicest guys in baseball. But he knows how to separate the two—nice guy, big league hitter.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Billy Williams: Invisible Iron Man," in Baseball Stars of 1971 (March 1971), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 106
Sports-related

Way , Guy , Thinking , Light

“If your confusion leads you in the right direction, the results can be uncommonly rewarding.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter One

“All who are weary and heavy laden; all who suffer under injustice; all who suffer from the outrages of the existing bourgeois society; all who have in them the feeling of the worth of humanity, look to us, turn hopefully to us, as the only party that can bring rescue and deliverance. And if we, the opponents of this unjust world of violence, suddenly reach out the hand of brotherhood to it, conclude alliances with its representatives, invite our comrades to go hand in hand with the enemy whose misdeeds have driven the masses into our camp, what confusion must result in their minds! … It must be that for the hundreds and thousands, for the millions that have sought salvation under our banner, it was all a colossal mistake for them to come to us. If we are not different from the others, then we are not the right ones – the Savior is yet to come; and the Social Democracy was a false Messiah, no better than the other false ones! Just in this fact lies our strength, that we are not like the others, and that we are not only not like the others, and that we are not simply different from the others, but that we are their deadly enemy, who have sworn to storm and demolish the Bastile of Capitalism, whose defenders all those others are. Therefore we are only strong when we are alone. This is not to say that we are to individualise or to isolate ourselves. We have never lacked for company, and we never shall so long as the fight lasts. On the essentially true but literally false phrase about a “single reactionary mass,” the Social Democracy has never believed since it passed from the realm of theory to that of practice. We know that the individual members and divisions of the “single reactionary mass” are in conflict with each other, and we have always used these conflicts for our purposes. We have used opponents against opponents, but have never allowed them to use us.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

World , Feeling , Democracy , Strong

“The simultaneousness of states of mind in the work of art: that is the intoxicating aim of our art... In the pictorial description of the various states of mind of a leave-taking, perpendicular lines, undulating lines and as it were worn out, clinging here and there to silhouettes of empty bodies, may well express languidness and discouragement. Confused and trepidating lines, either straight or curved, mingled with the outlined hurried gestures of people calling to one another will express a sensation of chaotic excitement. On the other hand, horizontal lines, fleeting, rapid and jerky, brutally cutting in half lost profiles of faces or crumbling and rebounding fragments of landscape, will give the tumultuous feelings of the person going away.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Source: 1912, Les exposants au public', 1912, pp. 47, 49

People , Art , Feeling , Personality

“Unfortunately, several decades of Keynesian instruction on the virtues of budget deficits have left the public and our political leaders confused about the costs of running persistent deficits. […] Keynes has been that influential defunct scribbler for the past generation. But who would ever have thought that the politician hearing Keynes's voice in the air might be Ronald Reagan”

Martin Feldstein (1939–2019) American economist

"Counterrevolution in Progress", Challenge (1988).

Past

“Probably the respect or stigma attaching to particular classes of actions arose from the fact that these classes of actions were—or were thought to be—beneficial or injurious to the society of the time; but it is also clear that this good or bad name once created clings to the action long after the action has ceased in the course of social progress to be beneficial in the one case, or injurious in the other; and indeed long after the thinkers of the race have discovered the discrepancy. And so in a short time arises a great confusion in the popular mind between what is really good or evil for the race and what is reputed to be so—the bolder spirits who try to separate the two having to atone for this confusion by their own martyrdom.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Evil , Time

“Without any coherent national organisation to repel from the land on which they had settled the ever-unknowable descents from the seas, the Saxons, now for four centuries entitled to be deemed the owners of the soil, very nearly succumbed completely to the Danish inroads. That they did not was due--as almost every critical turn of historic fortune has been due--to the sudden apparition in an era of confusion and decay of one of the great figures of history.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On King Alfred the Great; Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

History , Sea

“My desire to work is not stimulated by the classical proportions of Greek architecture, but by functional silos and hangars... The confusion of places, cluttered with art and culture chokes my inspiration. What stimulates and interests me is the natural noise of a busy city, and the practical lay-out of a harbor or factory which has come into being without consideration of any aesthetic principles.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

Quote from 'Private Notebooks of Fritz Wotruba'; transl. Peter Foges & Haakon Chevalier – Neuchatel, Editions du Griffion, 1961.

Art , Business , Nature

“Sandra had spent her days rendering pass/fail verdicts over troubled minds, applying tests most functional adults easily passed. Is the subject oriented to time and place? Does the subject understand the consequences of his actions? But if she could give the same test to humanity as a whole, Sandra thought, the outcome would be very much in doubt. Subject is confused and often self-destructive. Subject pursues short-term gratification at the expense of his own well-being.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Vortex

Source: Vortex (2011), Chapter 1 (p. 16)

Understanding , Time

“She came naturally by her confused and groundless fears, for her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.”

James Thurber book My Life and Hard Times

My Life and Hard Times (1933) page 33, Harper & Row, New York.
From other writings

Life , Fear , Nature , Housing

“The perception of you is one thing. You're this famous person, and now you're this famous person who's a bombshell. So all of a sudden, that's the only way I get jobs. So I have to become the part. And they're telling you this is the way to do it. One director actually said to me, "I want to hear you talk dumber and faster." … He thought it was funny for the girl to be dumb. I finally said, "That's it, man — I can't do this anymore." I'd go to meetings during the filming of a movie, and the directors would ask, "What do you think of the script?" I'd say, "It has a lot of problems." They were confused. That's not what they wanted from me. … So I was not very popular. At one point I said, "I don't want to do this — it's not my dream." And so I said, "I'm going to start a company. I am going to create projects for me. I'm going to create projects for other Latin women."”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

Because I got to a point where I was whining all the time. I was miserable. I was desperate
O interview (2003)

Women , Dreams , Way , Girl

“What has been the state of things since 1853? It is useless to blink the fact that not merely within the circle of the public departments and of Cabinets, but throughout the country at large, and within the precincts of this House—the guardians of the purse of the people—the spirit of public economy has been relaxed; charges upon the public funds of every kind have been admitted from time to time upon slight examination; every man's petition and prayer for this or that expenditure has been conceded with a facility which I do not hesitate to say you have only to continue for some five or ten years longer in order to bring the finances of the country into a state of absolute confusion.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1859/jul/21/financial-policy-of-the-late-government in the House of Commons (21 July 1859) against Benjamin Disraeli's Budget.
1850s

People , Time , Housing , Country

“The sea
For the sky
Confuses its white sheep
With pure angels
The sea
Shepherdess of the blue Infinite”

Charles Trenet (1913–2001) French singer-songwriter

"La Mer" (1943)

Angels , Sea

“The nation is deeply divided and the two camps seem to be talking past each other. John Kerry won all three debates but President Bush invokes his faith and that inspires his followers. In the end, it boils down to a philosophical difference over how to deal with an often confusing and threatening reality.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

Faith , Reality , Past

“I think an important quality that I have is that if you turn on the radio and hear somebody sing, you know it's me. You don't confuse my voice with another voice.”

Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) Italian operatic tenor

As quoted in The New York Times (7 September 2007) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/arts/music/06pavarotti.html?ei=5090&en=863a6b2459941ec6&ex=1346731200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Thinking , Singing

“[Glossary of Broken Dreams] was born out of the frustration that debate culture (not only) on digital platforms has become radically fragmented and fractalized, making it hard to call it discourse. It's a Tower of Babel-like context confusion that pleases me as a nerd, but as a political being who wants society to progress, it doesn't please me at all. […] I just thought it was time for something like a political spring cleaning of concepts. Because picking up the broom and taking a chance to get rid of stuff is the only way to prevent us all from becoming social liberal hoarders. One of my examples is the concept of privacy that, at the moment, everyone coddles like a puppy. Let me say this, as a good old Neo-leftist, I'm having problems with the conservative and deeply bourgeois can of worms that the privacy debate entails. I think it's time to change our thought patterns here. Instead of trying to find ways to defend our privacy come hell or high water, we should ask ourselves why privacy is such a major concern for us? Is what we're trying to achieve here just reformist symptom-control rather than a solution to the underlying problems?”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from an interview about Grenzfurthner's film Glossary of Broken Dreams (via Boing Boing https://boingboing.net/2018/05/24/at-the-golden-calf-slaughterho.html)

Dreams , Way , Spring , Hell

“"Whoever denies authority and fights against it is an anarchist," said Sebastien Faure. The definition is tempting in its simplicity, but simplicity is the first thing to guard against in writing a history of anarchism. Few doctrines or movements have been so confusedly understood in the public mind, and few have presented in their own variety of approach and action so much excuse for confusion.”

George Woodcock (1912–1995) Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic

Prologue http://www.ditext.com/woodcock/1.html
Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)

History , Fight

“There is a fundamental confusion between the notion of the older 'semantics' as connected with a theory of verbal 'meaning' and words defined by words, and the present theory of 'general semantics' where we deal only with neuro-semantic and neuro-linguistic living reactions of Smith, Smith, etc., as their reactions to neuro-semantic and neuro-linguistic environments as environments.”

Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher

Source: Science and Sanity (1933), p. vii, as cited in: Schaff (1962;91)

“I saw standing against the great stone pillar — on more red plush — a tall, slim boy in evening dress — so much slimmer, so much taller, so much more poised than I expected. A very refined face, not at all like those grinning 'Lindy' pictures — a firm mouth, clear, straight blue eyes, fair hair, and nice color. Then I went down the line very confused and overwhelmed by it all. He did not smile — just bowed and shook hands.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

On first meeting Charles.
Bring Me a Unicorn (1971)

Smile , Color , Boy

“The linguistic entity is not accurately defined until it is delimited, i. e. separated from everything that surrounds it on the phonic chain. These delimited entities or units stand in opposition to each other in the mechanism of language.
One is at first tempted to liken linguistic signs to visual signs, which can exist in space without becoming confused, and to assume that separation of the significant elements can be accomplished in the same way, without recourse to any mental process. The word "form," which is often used to indicate them (cf. the expression "verbal form," "noun form") gives support to the mistake. But we know that the main characteristic of the sound-chain is that it is linear.”

Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics

Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 103

Way , Support

“The 'minute' meant more like minute … Like we were small compared to a big arena rock band. And the other reason for the name — I had a bunch of names on a paper, and D. Boon picked that one. He liked it because there was some right-wing group who used the name. We thought, we'll call ourselves the same thing — there goes their power! It'll dilute it and confuse things.”

Mike Watt (1957) musician, songwriter

On the name of The Minutemen
watt bio (2005)

“I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.Please, just tell people to use KDE.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message to usability@gnome.org mailing list, 2005-12-12, 2006-08-28, Torvalds, Linus http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00021.html,
2000s, 2005

People , Disease , Thinking , Personality

“Cybernetics was defined by Wiener as “the science of control and communication, in the animal and the machine” — in a word, as the art of steermanship, and it is to this aspect that the book will be addressed. Co-ordination, regulation and control will be its themes, for these are of the greatest biological and practical interest.
We must, therefore, make a study of mechanism; but some introduction is advisable, for cybernetics treats the subject from a new, and therefore unusual, angle… The new point of view should be clearly understood, for any unconscious vacillation between the old and the new is apt to lead to confusion.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part I: Mechanism, p. 1: Lead paragraph

Books , Art , Communication , Study

“This is a citizenry which is annoyed, confused, insulted, and uncertain of how to protect the structures of the public good they struggled so long to put in place. Abruptly the national élites seem to prefer playing another game in which the public good is subjected to what they say are larger truths. All of these turn out to be either pedantically utilitarian or highly romantic. The utilitarian involves the reduction of society to self-interest. The romantic involves the selling of economic mythology as a new universal religion.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

Truth , Religion , Game , Universe

“I was a little confused as a kid because I grew up with my mom, and my mom is black. So, I was cultured in a very 'black' way. But when I go to school, I'm getting called 'white.' They would look at me, and they would curse me out. I didn't understand. I just knew I saw people of all different shades, and I was light. Now, I'm in a much bigger world.”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

Allure magazine, January 2008.

People , World , School , Way

“Until we in the community have made up our minds that what we really want is expiation, or removal, or reform, or or the discouragement of potential criminals, we shall get none of these, but only a confusion in which crime breeds more crime.”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

VI. Law and Communication. p. 110
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

Communication

“I find that life is easier when it is just a blur
With no details to confuse who or what or where I was
So when the ending comes the full regret will be obscure”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

The Difference In The Shades
Letting Off the Happiness (1998)

Life

“Order is found in things working beneficially together. It is not the forced condition of neatness, tidiness, and straightness all of which are, in design or energy terms, disordered. True order may lie in apparent confusion; it is the acid test of entropic order to test the system for yield. If it consumes energy beyond product, it is in disoder. If it produces energy to or beyond consumption, it is ordered.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 2.9

Lie

“In analyzing organization work, a single chart can frequently express more than any amount of detailed written explanation. First of all, clearly define author- ities within your establishment; then chart those authorities simply and graphically, so that every workman knows to whom he is responsible, and every executive knows who is responsible to him. Place this chart conspicuously in every department where each employee can see it. In case of disputed authority, final proof is immediately at hand. There is then no loop-hole through which a neglectful workman, foreman or executive can crawl no longer does he have the excuse that he thought somebody else was going to do it. In clean-cut form, his duties and relations to other men of the organization are laid down once and for all, and responsibility rests on the right man. Failure so to specify responsibilities inevitably means confusion all down the line.”

Clinton Edgar Woods (1863) American engineer

Source: Industrial organization (1914), p. 24-25

Men , Failure

“I knew that it was human nature which lay at the root of History and that no matter where I found myself I was bound to discover superficial similarities expressing and exemplifying that nature. It was human idealism and human impatience and human despair which continued to produce these terrible wars. Human virtues and vices, mixed and confused in individuals, created what we called “History”. Yet I could see no way in which the vicious circle of aspiration and desperation might ever be broken. We were all victims of our own imagination.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 1 “The Camp on Rishiri” (p. 339)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

War , Way , Imagination , History

“Some words hide the truth. Just as torture can be named enhanced interrogation, and logging of old-growth forests is named the Healthy Forest Initiative, words that lie about prostitution leave people confused about the nature of prostitution and trafficking. The words "sex work" make the harms of prostitution invisible.”

Melissa Farley (1942) American psychologist

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia (2006)

People , Truth , Lie , Sex

“The influence of consumerism has led us to confuse institutions for people, means for the mission, and programs for the Spirit's power.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

People

“The confused mass of rules of conduct called law, which has been bequeathed to us by slavery, serfdom, feudalism, and royalty, has taken the place of those stone monsters, before whom human victims used to be immolated, and whom slavish savages dared not even touch lest they should be slain by the thunderbolts of heaven.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: Law and Authority (1886), I

Law

“What magic is this” asked one young German thickly.
”Not magic. Science. Preferable to magic.”
“Oh really?” said Sagitta in a freezing tone, and William blushed.
“You yourself have said there are very few people with the talent of magic. Science is open to all.”
“When knowledge ends, only faith remains,” said Armand.
“So we should abandon the pursuit of knowledge lest we diminish faith? That’s stupid,” said William belligerently.
“The simple folk of village and cottage are happier if they’re not confused with things beyond their understanding,” declared Sagitta.
“Sagitta, how do we know it’s beyond their understanding?”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

“Because if it weren’t they wouldn’t be common,” cried Solms-Braunfels, and there was another shout of laughter from the table.
Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 8 (p. 89)

People , Stupidity , Faith , Understanding

“A lot of people in America think that I’m Irish. Then, of course, in The Mummy the character that I played was supposed to be quintessentially English. And then after The Hurricane people out there are really confused. They now think I’m Canadian… well, sort of”

John Hannah (actor) (1962) Scottish actor

Hannah’s Life on the High Wire http://www.johnhannah.net/interview00.php#tic(May 6, 2000)

People , Thinking

“It's not as though we can expect that next year or a decade from now someone will find the correct systems approach and all deception will disappear. This, in my opinion, is not in the nature of systems. What is in the nature of systems is a continuing perception and deception, a continuing re-viewing of the world, of the whole system, and of its components. The essence of the systems approach, therefore, is confusion as well as enlightenment. The two are inseparable aspects of human living.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 231; cited in Charles Smith (2007, p. 44)

World , Nature

“His insatiable passion for singular odds and ends had a meaning in it; he was groping towards a scientific ordering of phenomena; but the twilight of his age was too confusing, and he could rarely distinguish between a fact and a fantasy.”

John Aubrey (1626–1697) English writer and antiquarian

Lytton Strachey Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931) p. 24.
Criticism

Age , Passion

“As far as I can see, this is a system that has enriched multiple companies and that pays and fires teachers with a cattle birthing formula, confuses children with talking pineapples, and has the same kind of rules regarding transparency as Brad Pitt had for Fight Club.”

John Oliver (1977) English comedian

Last Week Tonight: Standardized Testing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lyURyVz7k Last Week Tonight: Standardized Testing (3 May 2015)
Last Week Tonight (2014–present)

Children , Birth , Teachers , Fight

“The free flow of people across borders is not to be confused with the free flow of goods across borders. Free trade is a positive-sum game. Contrary to illegal immigration, it is always invited, consensual and hence mutually beneficial to the parties involved.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“We Are the World,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=147 WorldNetDaily.com, March 31, 2006.
2000s, 2006

People , Game

“America today is a confused society, caught up in a terror war, a culture war, and a media war, where honesty and professional standards have vanished.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2007-03-23
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television

War

“Often the adolescent plague
Reward your grace
Confuse your hunger capture the fake…”

Nico (1938–1988) German musician, model and actress, one of Warhol's superstars

Afraid

Hunger

“There is thus all the more reason to exercise extreme vigilance … against anything that may lead the being to become "fused," or preferably and more accurately "confused" or even "dissolved," in a sort of "cosmic consciousness" that shuts out all "transcendence" and so also shuts out all effective spirituality. This is the ultimate consequence of all the anti-metaphysical errors known more especially in their philosophical aspect by such names as "pantheism," "immanentism," and "naturalism."”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times (1945), p. 288

Error , Exercises , Nature

“Everything you say always sounds exactly right, my friend. You have the gift of turning confusion into an epigram.’ He smiled.
‘Yes, but it is a kind of tyranny with me, for I am far too neat for my own good. And life, as we know, is mostly chaos.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

Ch 3
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun

Life , Smile

“We trained hard... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

Petronius (27–66) Roman courtier, supposed author of the Satyricon

A paraphrased quotation from Charlton Ogburn (1911–1998) in "Merrill's Marauders: The truth about an incredible adventure" http://www.harpers.org/archive/1957/01/0007289 in the January 1957 issue of Harper's Magazine
Actual Charlton Ogburn quote: "We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
Misattributed

Life , Learning , Time , Training

“For let us keep one fact clearly in mind: the German language was not innocent of the horrors of Nazism. It is not merely that a Hitler, a Goebbels, and a Himmler happened to speak German. Nazism found in the language precisely what it needed to give voice to its savagery. Hitler heard inside his native tongue the latent hysteria, the confusion, the quality of hypnotic trance.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"The Hollow Miracle".
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)

“Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as “intellectual property” — a term also applied to patents, trademarks, and other more obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so much, that it is ill-advised to generalize about them. It is best to talk specifically about “copyright,” or about “patents,” or about “trademarks.”
The term “intellectual property” carries a hidden assumption—that the way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy with physical objects, and our conception of them as physical property.
When it comes to copying, this analogy disregards the crucial difference between material objects and information: information can be copied and shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be.
To avoid spreading unnecessary bias and confusion, it is best to adopt a firm policy not to speak or even think in terms of “intellectual property”.
The hypocrisy of calling these powers “rights” is starting to make the World “Intellectual Property” Organization embarrassed.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing (1996)
1990s

World , Law , Way , Thinking

“When I was a boy I was always depressed and confused, now I think I'm not garbage. I don't try to prove to my parents that I am good at something anymore. But I am a failure with women. I can only be a one night lover.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

GIOIA Magazine Interview

Women , Boy , Lovers , Failure

“The needs that are met by tyrants are as real as those to which freedom answers; sometimes they are more urgent. Tyrants promise security - and release from the tedium of everyday existence. To be sure, this is only a confused fantasy. The drab truth of tyranny is a life spent in waiting. But the perennial romance of tyranny comes from its promising its subjects a life more interesting than any they can contrive for themselves.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Unsaved: The Grand Inquisitor and Flying Fish (p. 124)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Life , Truth , Freedom , Waiting

“In single combat, we can confuse the enemy by attacking with varied techniques when the chance arises. Feint a thrust or cut, or make the enemy think you are going close to him, and when he is confused you can easily win.
This is the essence of fighting, and you must research it deeply.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Thinking , Chance , Fight

“Semiotic provides a basis for understanding the main forms of human activity and their interrelationship, since all these activities and relations are reflected in the signs which mediate the activities … In giving such understanding, semiotic promises to fulfil one of the tasks which traditionally has been called philosophical. Philosophy has often sinned in confusing in its own language the various functions which signs perform. But it is an old tradition that philosophy should aim to give insight into the characteristic forms of human activity and to strive for the most general and the most systematic knowledge possible. This tradition appears in a modern form in the identification of philosophy with the theory of signs and the unification of science, that is, with the more general and systematic aspects of pure and descriptive semiotic.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 58-59 as cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 88-89

Understanding , Knowledge , Appearance , Science

“Though I know something about British birds I should have been lost and confused among American birds, of which unhappily I know little or nothing. Colonel Roosevelt not only knew more about American birds than I did about British birds, but he knew about British birds also. What he had lacked was an opportunity of hearing their songs, and you cannot get a knowledge of the songs of birds in any other way than by listening to them.
We began our walk, and when a song was heard I told him the name of the bird. I noticed that as soon as I mentioned the name it was unnecessary to tell him more. He knew what the bird was like. It was not necessary for him to see it. He knew the kind of bird it was, its habits and appearance. He just wanted to complete his knowledge by hearing the song. He had, too, a very trained ear for bird songs, which cannot be acquired without having spent much time in listening to them. How he had found time in that busy life to acquire this knowledge so thoroughly it is almost impossible to imagine, but there the knowledge and training undoubtedly were. He had one of the most perfectly trained ears for bird songs that I have ever known, so that if three or four birds were singing together he would pick out their songs, distinguish each, and ask to be told each separate name; and when farther on we heard any bird for a second time, he would remember the song from the first telling and be able to name the bird himself.”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Recreation (1919)

Life , Way , Imagination , Business

“But who is there to help when all the "helpers" fear their own personal history? Bogus traditional morality, destructive religious interpretations, and confusion in our methods of childrearing all make this experience harder and hinder our initiative. Without a doubt, the pharmaceutical industry also profits from our blindness and despondency.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

Fear , History , Help , Personality

““It’s not hope,” said Jocundra. “It’s just confusion. I know he’s dead.”
“Sure it’s hope,” said Mr. Brisbeau. “Me, I ain’t no genius, but I can tell you ‘bout hope. When my boy he’s missin’ in action, I live wit hope for ten damn years. It’s the cruelest thing in the world. If it get a hook in you, maybe it never let you go no matter how hopeless things really is.” He closed up the sack and laughed. “I remember what my grand-mère used to say ’round breakfas’ time. My brother John he’s always after her to fix pancakes. Firs’ ting ever’ mornin’ he say, ‘Well, I hope we’re goin’ to have pancakes.’ And my grand-mère she tell him jus’ be glad his belly’s full, him, and then she say, ‘You keep your hope for tomorrow, boy, ’cause we got grits for today.’” He stood and shouldered the sack. “Maybe that’s all there is to some kinds of hopin’. It makes them grits go down easier.””

Lucius Shepard book Green Eyes

Epilogue, p. 274
Green Eyes (1984)

World , Hope , Boy , Time

“Kantians, of course, will think that I have lost the plot from the start, and that only confusion can result from failure to make these essential, utterly fundamental divisions between “is” and “ought,” fact and value, or the descriptive and the normative, in as rigorous and systematic a way as possible, just as I think they have fallen prey to a kind of fetishism, attributing to a set of human conceptual invention a significance they do not have. … In some contexts, a relative distinction between the facts and human valuations of those facts, or norms, might be perfectly useful. But the division makes sense only relative to the context, and can’t be extracted from that context, promoted, and declared to have absolute standing.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 16-17.

Way , Failure , Thinking , Sense

“Empirical problems of a nonlinguistic sort are not solved by linguistic considerations, but it is important that the two kinds of problems not be confused and that nonlinguistic problems be expressed in such a form as aids their empirical solution.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 57

Problem

“Young men go to war. Sometimes because they are have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Life , Men , War , Sadness

“As for Picasso, the specialist was amazed by the rapidity of his understanding. The tradition he came from had prepared him better than ours for a problem to do with structure. And Berthe Weil was right when she treated those who compared him/confused him with, a Steinlen or a Lautrec as idiots. He had already rejected them in their own century, a century we had no intention of prolonging. Whether or not the Universe was endowed with another dimension, art was going to move into a different field.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Art , Understanding , Problem , Universe

“When an individual appears before others, he wittingly and unwittingly projects a definition of the situation, of which a conception of himself is an important part. When an event occurs which is expressively incompatible with this fostered impression, significant consequences are simultaneously felt in three levels of social reality, each of which involves a different point of reference and a different order of fact.
First, the social interaction, treated here as a dialogue between two teams, may come to an embarrassed and confused halt; the situation may cease to be defined, previous positions may become no longer tenable, and participants may find themselves without a charted course of action…
Secondly, in addition to these disorganizing consequences for action at the moment, performance disruptions may have consequences of a more far-reaching kind. Audiences tend to accept the self projected by the individual performer during any current performance as a responsible representative of his colleague-grouping, of his team, and of his social establishment…
Finally, we often find that the individual may deeply involve his ego in his identification with a particular role, establishment, and group and in his self-conception as someone who does not disrupt social interaction or let down the social units which depend upon that interaction.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 155-6

Reality , Appearance , Parting , Dependency

“Like Karl Kraus, [Wittgenstein] was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby mostly offended his ear—particularly when they happened to speak philosophically; and like Karl Kraus, he suspected that the institutions could not but be corrupt if the idiom of the race was confused, presumptuous, and vacuous, a fabric of nonsense, untruth, deception, and self-deception.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: Anti-Freud (1990), p. 67.

Men

“[Industrialized man, drunk on alcohol and gasoline, becomes a confusion of sheep, bull and hyena. ] Charming. The least obstructed little asshole looks on himself in the mirror as Jupiter. [18]”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

Mea culpa; suivi de la vie et l'oeuvre de Semmelweis (1937)

Alcohol

“The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

A Disquisition on Government (1851), p. 90
1850s

Error

“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 (1892–1982) American poet and Librarian of Congress

Art and Law, Riders on Earth (1978)

Life , Law , Business , Sense

“One of the questions on which clarity of thinking is now most necessary is that of the relation between the methods of science and of Marxist philosophy. Although much has already been written on the subject, yet there is still an enormous amount of confusion and contradictory statement.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

J.D. Bernal (1937) "Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science" in: Science and Society, Volume II, No. 1, Winter 1937; Online ( here http://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1930s/dsams.htm) on Marxists Internet Archive (2002).

Question , Thinking , Science

“Teaching and research are not to be confused with training for a profession. Their greatness and their misfortune is that they are a refuge or a mission.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss book Tristes Tropiques

Source: Tristes Tropiques (1955), Chapter 6 : The Making of an Anthropologist, p. 55

Training

“Tucker: You guys going to Milwaukee?
Guy: Yes sir, heading home after a vacation.
Tucker: Did you know there are midgets in Milwaukee?
[The man and his wife are silent and confused. ]
Tucker: HUNDREDS OF THEM!”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

The Midget Story http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/the_midget_story.phtml,
The Tucker Max Stories

Guy , Home

“Everything seemed confused and contradictory, and he longed for one clear command from a divine martinet.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 7

“All suffering is born of desire. True love is never frustrated. How can the sense of unity be frustrated? (…) Love is a state of being. Sex is energy. Love is wise, sex is blind. Once the true nature of love and sex is understood there will be no conflict or confusion.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Sex
Source: "I am That." P.111.

Love , Sex , Nature , Sense

“We are shocked when we see educators, timid before criticism and confused about first principles, betray their trust. And we wonder what can be that 'philosophy of education' which believes that young people can be trained to the duties of citizenship by wrapping their minds in cotton wool.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Who is Loyal to America? (1947)

People , Education , Training

“All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (23 August 1787), The Works of John Adams.
1780s

Nature

“Nothing is more delightful than to confuse and upset people. People one doesn't like. What's the use of giving them explanations that are merely food for curiosity? The truth is that people love nothing but themselves and their little possessions, their income, their dog. This state of affairs derives from a false conception of property. If one is poor in spirit, one possesses a sure and indomitable intelligence, a savage logic, a point of view that can not be shaken. Try to be empty and fill your brain cells with a petty happiness. Always destroy what you have in you. On random walks..”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

Love , People , Truth , Food

“Whereas the conception of space and time as a four-dimensional manifold has been very fruitful for mathematical physicists, its effect in the field of epistemology has been only to confuse the issue. Calling time the fourth dimension gives it an air of mystery. One might think that time can now be conceived as a kind of space and try in vain to add visually a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space. It is essential to guard against such a misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. If we add time to space as a fourth dimension it does not lose any of its peculiar character as time. …Musical tones can be ordered according to volume and pitch and are thus brought into a two dimensional manifold. Similarly colors can be determined by the three basic colors red, green and blue… Such an ordering does not change either tones or colors; it is merely a mathematical expression of something that we have known and visualized for a long time. Our schematization of time as a fourth dimension therefore does not imply any changes in the conception of time. …the space of visualization is only one of many possible forms that add content to the conceptual frame. We would therefore not call the representation of the tone manifold by a plane the visual representation of the two dimensional tone manifold.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Music , Color , Mathematics , Thinking

“From the invention of the cotton-gin slavery became a progressive system — not passively tolerated as in process of extinction, but actively striving for development and extension. It became a conscious political power. It made no offensive professions. It still deprecated itself as an evil, so difficult to deal with, and, with an adroit allusion to Ham and Onesimus, it smoothed the ecclesiastical conscience of the country and only asked to be let alone. And it was let alone. The War of 1812, and the consequent commercial confusion and renewed devotion to trade, held the country torpid upon the subject. If anybody looked at slavery inquisitively, it folded its hands demurely upon its breast and said, 'I am such a dreadful thing! How unfortunate that I should exist! What can be done with me? Just please to let me alone, that is all I want. A leper, you see; a miserable leper!”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

War , Evil , Country

“No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in your words. No imprecision in your thoughts.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.
VIII, 51
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

“Men in general are neither very good nor very bad, but mediocre… Man with his vices, his weaknesses, his virtues, this confused medley of good and ill, high and low, goodness and depravity, is yet, take him all in all, the object on earth most worthy of study, of interest, of pity, of attachment and of admiration. And since we haven't got angels, we can attach ourselves to nothing greater and more worthy of our devotion than our own kind.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Letter to Eugene Stoffels (Jan. 3, 1845) as quoted by Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) Ch. 11 "Intellectual and Philosopher"
Original text:
Les hommes ne sont en général ni très-bons, ni très-mauvais : ils sont médiocres. [...] L'homme avec ses vices, ses faiblesses, ses vertus, ce mélange confus de bien et de mal, de bas et de haut, d'honnête et de dépravé, est encore, à tout prendre, l'objet le plus digne d'examen, d'intérêt, de pitié, d'attachement et d'admiration qui se trouve sur la terre; et puisque les anges nous manquent, nous ne saurions nous attacher à rien qui soit plus grand et plus digne de notre dévouement que nos semblables.
1840s

Men , Angels , Study

“I spent the first half of my career being accused of being gay when I hadn't had anything like a gay relationship. So I spent my years growing up being told what my sexuality was really— which was kind of confusing.”

George Michael (1963–2016) English singer-songwriter, musician, producer

CNN Interview (April 1998), reported in Kara Fox, " 1998: George Michael comes out in CNN interview http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/26/entertainment/george-michael-cnn-interview-1998/index.html", CNN (December 26, 2016).

“Early on, I made the mistake of wanting spiritual feelings to endure and remain romantic. Like a new couple expecting to always feel in love, I operated my faith thinking God and I were going to walk around smelling flowers. When this didn't happen, I became confused.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Love , God , Faith , Feeling

“I started questioning gender-based assumptions a long time ago. When I was eight, I was confused at being called “bossy,” because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for our parents — but the boys were not.”

Emma Watson (1990) British actress and model

UN Speech on the HeForShe campaign (2014)

Boy , Question , Parent , Time

“Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to — my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther — all is confusion beyond it.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

People , Thinking

“It is a fundamental and deplorable error by which we in this country have confused education with the acquisition of knowledge…. Amount of knowledge is in itself not of first importance, but to make the best use of what we know. The easy assumption of our educationists that we have only to supply the mind with a smattering of facts in each department of knowledge and the mind can be trusted to develop itself and take its own suitable road is contrary to science, contrary to human experience…. Much as we have lost as a nation, we have always preserved our intellectual alertness, quickness and originality; but even this last gift is threatened by our University system, and if it goes, it will be the beginning of irretrievable degradation and final extinction.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Early 1900s, Centenary Edition of Sri Aurobindo's works (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1972) 3.125-127
India's Rebirth

Education , Error , Knowledge , Universe

“Don’t confuse rescue and kidnapping. I have not asked to be rescued.”

Kameron Hurley (1980) American writer

Source: God’s War (2011), Chapter 34 (p. 252).

“I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

On turning 70 in Journals 1939-83 (1986), as quoted by R Z Sheppard in TIMEmagazine (20 January 1986)

Youth , Age

“[Computer science] is not really about computers -- and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes…and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use.”

Hal Abelson (1947) computer scientist

Source: Introductory lecture to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLUPjefuWA

Understanding , Thinking , Sense , Science

“In its own more confused, less advanced way, New Dealism too has spread abroad the stress on the state as against the individual, planning as against private enterprise, jobs (even if relief jobs) against opportunities, security against initiative, "human rights" against "property rights." There can be no doubt that the psychological effect of New Dealism has been what the capitalists say it has been: to undermine public confidence in capitalist ideas and rights and institutions. Its most distinctive features help to prepare the minds of the masses for the acceptance of the managerial social structure.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 201–202.

Way , Confidence , Idea , Help

“The term system has a number of meanings. There are systems of numbers and of equations, systems of value and of thought, systems of law, solar systems, organic systems, management systems, command and control systems, electronic systems, even the Union Pacific Railroad system. The meanings of "system" are often confused. The most general, however, is: A system is a set of interacting units with relationships among them. The word "set" implies that the units have some common properties. These common properties are essential if the units are to interact or have relationships. The state of each unit is constrained by, conditioned by, or dependent on the state of other units. The units are coupled. Moreover, there is at least one measure of the sum of its units which is larger than the sum of that measure of its units.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Source: Living systems, 1978, p. 16; As cited in: Sven Rasegård (2002) Man and Science: A Web of Systems and Social Conventions. p. 29

Law , Dependency

“Textualism should not be confused with so-called strict constructionism, which is a degraded form of textualism that brings the whole philosophy into disrepute. I am not a strict constructionist, and no one ought to be--though better that, I suppose, than a nontextualist. A text should not be construed strictly, and it should not be construed leniently; it should be construed reasonably, to contain all that it fairly means.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation 23 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). http://web.archive.org/web/20060911103004/http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/scalia97.pdf (PDF).
1990s

“Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.”

Iris Murdoch book The Book and the Brotherhood

The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) p. 248.

Passion , Indifference

“In Russia during the war, you seldom spoke of Communism versus capitalism. In the first place, we were then comrades-in-arms and the subject was not important. In the second place, the official line of the inevitable struggle between capitalism and Communism was a bit confused. Marshal of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin had indicated to Commander-in-Chief Franklin Roosevelt that the two systems could live in Diplomat-at-Large Wendell Willkie's One World side by side.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

A Cake of Soap (1948)

War , World , Communication

“I said, “I am a soldier, grown old and tired and confused. I have been fighting since before you were born. And I have yet to see anything gained.””

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 12, “The Plain of Fear” (p. 506)

Fight

“A healthy forest, untouched by forestry technology, is made up of a strange mixture of vegetation. Alongside well-defined areas of noble trees, conditions of apparent chaos can be found, which can best be described as irregular confusion. People who are not aware of the importance of the balance in Nature, of which the forest is a part, want to clear areas of everything they do not consider to be useful. A great deal of sensitive concern and observation is necessary to begin to understand why Nature depends on an apparently chaotic disorder.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger wrote in 1930
Living Water

People , Understanding , Nature , Tree

“No one can be a true mystic who is not thoroughly versed in the ways of nature. The more nature is attracted by spiritual favors, the more it is inclined to make itself the master of them. Nature always mingles its own spirit with the spirit of God. unless we keep a close watch over it, it will always remain so. Natures most subtle snare is to lead us to confuse what is licit with what is expedient. When we doubt the inspiration of an impulse, whether from grace or nature, we should picture a similar object which is without doubt acceptable to nature. If this representation pleases us, it is a sign that the first inclination also comes from nature and is consequently to be rejected.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

God , Way , Nature

“Looking backward on a period which is finished, we are looking at actually realized returns, costs, etc., as those items are registered in the bookkeeping of business. In such an ex post calculation there is, as we will show later, an exact balance between the invested waiting and the value of gross investment [Phil: he appears to mean savings and investment]. Looking forward there is no such balance except under certain conditions which remain to be ascertained. In the ex ante calculus it is a question not of realized results but of anticipations, calculations, and plans driving the dynamic process forward. Had this distinction been kept in mind, much confusion about “saving and investment” would have been avoided. There is in fact no contradiction at all between the statement of an exact bookkeeping balance ex post and the obvious inference that in a situation in which saving is increasing without a corresponding increase in investment, or perhaps with an adverse movement in investment, there must be a tendency ex ante to disparity.”

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) Swedish economist

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 34

Question , Business , Appearance , Waiting

“We were the kids that made America famous.
The kind of kids that long since drove our parents to dispair.
We were lazy long hairs dropping out, lost confused, and copping out.
Convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

What Made America Famous?
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Parent , Future

“Again, it should be borne in mind that the mere text, and only the text, and not any commentaries or creeds written by those who wished to give the text a meaning apart from its plain reading, was adopted as the Constitution of the United States. It should also be borne in mind that the intentions of those who framed the Constitution, be they good or bad, for slavery or against slavery, are so respected so far, and so far only, as we find those intentions plainly stated in the Constitution. It would be the wildest of absurdities, and lead to endless confusion and mischiefs, if, instead of looking to the written paper itself, for its meaning, it were attempted to make us search it out, in the secret motives, and dishonest intentions, of some of the men who took part in writing it. It was what they said that was adopted by the people, not what they were ashamed or afraid to say, and really omitted to say.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

Men , People , Secret , Search

“The world is full of warfare 'twixt the evil and the good;
I watched the battle from afar as one who understood
The shouting and confusion, the bloody, blundering fight—
How few there are that see it clear, how few that wage it right!”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Another Chance.

World , Evil , Fight

“As coordination contains all the principles of organization, it likewise expresses all the purposes of organization, in so far as these purposes relate to its internal structure. To avoid confusion we must keep in mind that there are always two objectives of organization, the internal and the external. The latter may be anything, according to the purpose or interest that calls the group together, but the internal objective is coordinative always.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 20

“Your world frightens and confuses me.”

Phil Hartman (1948–1998) Canadian American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist

On Saturday Night Live, As Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer

World

“Only a year after the collapse of the Third Reich a strangely conclusive piece of evidence can be advanced to support the claim that "fanatical", this key National Socialist term, never really had the sting taken out of it by excessive use. For although scraps of the LTI surface all over the place in contemporary language, "fanatical" has disappeared. From this one can safely conclude that either consciously or subconsciously people remained aware of the real facts of the case all through those twelve years, namely, that a confused state of mind, equally close to sickness and criminality, was for twelve years [of Nazi rule] held to be the greatest virtue.”

Victor Klemperer book LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii

Source: LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich) (1947), p. 61.

People , Support

“Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

As quoted in Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn : Who Settled the State of Pennsylvania, and Founded the City of Philadelphia (1827) by S. C. Stevens, p. 117

“A lot of people are just really confused by me; they don’t know what to think of me, so they try to compartmentalize me or diminish me. Maybe they just feel unsafe. But any time you have an overtly emotional or irrational, negative reaction to something, you’re fearing something that it’s bringing up in you.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Interview:Sunday Times Culture, The Times, 2009-09-20 http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6836901.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1,

People , Fear , Feeling , Thinking

Quotes about confusion page 9

Quotes about confusion
page 9