Quotes about mess
page 2

“We are the ones who create the messes in our heads. It does not come from outside.”

Source: Adultery

“It sends out a very clear message: "Mess with us and we'll do something worse than kill you. We'll kill your children.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Children

“People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

People, Problem

“Maybe we’ll admit this thing we have is perfect, not worth messing around with. And stay together forever. If you’re interested, that is.”
She glanced away. “I could think about that.”
He buried his face in her neck. “Think fast”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Wild Man Creek

Thinking, Perfection

“Peace and harmony do not require perfection. Thank goodness for that—because life so often seems to be an itch here, a glitch there, a mess waiting to happen. Harmony is flexible. It bends with imperfection. So should you.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself

Life, Peace, Waiting, Perfection

“No, no, I never mess around.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“Make you mess your message.”

Robin Roberts

Everybody's Got Something
Variant: Make your mess your message.

“It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)
Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker

“They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Variant: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
Source: The Great Gatsby

Money, People

“I hate how my past actions keep messing up my future options, Seth muttered.
Then you've started down the road to wisdom, Grandpa replied.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

Wisdom, Hate, Past, Future

“Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Life

“I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World, Time

“I dont know," said Simon, "it doesn't sound so bad to me. I'd rather have someone mess around inside my head than chop it off."
"Then you're a bigger idiot than you look.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Family

“But Hale wasn't just a member of her crew who had messed up. He was Hale. Her Hale. And Kat just wanted him back.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

“If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

“What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.”

Peter de Vries (1910–1993) American editor and novelist

Source: The Blood of the Lamb

God, People, Idea, Chance

“You're a magnet for mess. I've never seen anything like it.
Lula to Stephanie”

Janet Evanovich Twelve Sharp

Source: Twelve Sharp

“I’m done. I’m old, I’m sad - that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Death, Sadness, Art

“Have God make a message out of your mess.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

God

“I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, The Deep Blue Good-by (1964)
Source: The Deep Blue Good-By
Context: I am wary of a lot of things, such as plastic credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants, check lists, time payments, political parties, lending libraries, television, actresses, junior chambers of commerce, pageants, progress, and manifest destiny. I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.

“Sometimes you've got to make a mess before you clean it up.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and out of it comes some joy. It must be magic.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Forgiveness, Joy

“First Emma. Now Thad. Regin was sick and tired of non-evil vampiric creatures messing with her millennium's worth of scathing animosity for their species…”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Evil

“There's something else there as well, something entirely her own. An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Life

“That is the freakiest thing that ever happened to me.” I nodded toward the mess. “And if you knew my life, you’d realize just how freaky that is.”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

Life

“She wondered if it was her stupid mother, the goddess of love, messing with her thoughts. If Piper started getting urges to read fashion magazines, she was going to have to find Aphrodite and smack her.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Love, Stupidity, Fashion, Reading

“A creative mess is better than idle tidiness.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

“Honestly, darling," she said. "Do you even look in a mirror before you walk out the door? Your hair's a mess."

He dodged her as she reached toward his head. "Are you kidding? I spend hours in front of the mirror toit look this way.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Way

“You do not mess with the special investigators.”

Lee Child book Bad Luck and Trouble

Source: Bad Luck and Trouble

“An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: Look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they really are.
Source: Mockingjay

Life

“I need you like - like light. You're light, all right - like a flame to a moth. I told you once that you shouldn't mess with forbidden things - I should have taken my own advice.”

L.J. Smith The Forbidden Game

Source: The Forbidden Game

Light

“Don't mess with anybody on a Monday. It's a bad, bad day.”

Louise Fitzhugh book Harriet the Spy

Source: Harriet the Spy

“Good enough is good enough. Perfect will make you a big fat mess every time.”

Rebecca Wells (1952) American writer

Source: The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder

Time, Perfection

“Don't mess with me, Calvin. You'll only get hurt.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips book Nobody's Baby But Mine

Source: Nobody's Baby But Mine

Hurt

“the Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.”

Jasper Fforde book One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Source: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Books, World

“I do have some leftover chicken and pasta. (Grace)
And wine?… That’s acceptable (Julian)
Look, buster, I’m not your cooking wench. Mess with me and I’ll feed you Alpo. (Grace)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

Wine, Cooking

“Well", Fang said, mimicking a thick Southern drawl. "I must say its mighty nice of them Daimons to clean up after themselves when you kill them" He held his hands up to them. "Look Ma, no mess."

"Does Fang have an off switch?" Talon asked Vane.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

“It's your time to live, don't mess it up.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Time

“Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like… you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

Thinking

“It was a lot easier when we could just brand'em," Ben said. "Then everybody'd know not to mess with our womenfolk.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Manhunting

“Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Life, Beauty

“Walk really, really carefully. It's not complicated, but if you mess up, you'll die, so pay attention.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Name of the Star

“Everyone has something to hide. And if they couldn't hide it the world would be in a lot worse mess than it is.”

Richard Matheson book A Stir of Echoes

Source: A Stir of Echoes

World

“Don't mess with me, lady. I've been drinking with skeletons.”

Mike Mignola (1960) Comic creator

Drink

“I am so sorry. I wish you knew even one tenth of one percent of how sorry I am…. It was my fault. Can I kill myself here, or should I do it outside, so the mess on your carpet doesn't upset your mother?”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

“Leave it to a man to mess things up”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“The mistakes don't matter. It's what you do when you mess up that does.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Early to Death, Early to Rise

“We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Rat, Ch. 1
Variant: There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Context: There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do.

“Do I look like a mess?” she asked.
He nodded. “But you’re my mess,” he whispered.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Romancing Mister Bridgerton

“Sometimes you need to make a mess.
-Loretta, the Rollinses' hosekeeper”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

“It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Girl, Boy

“Well, then, since you say there will be another life for me, let us both pray I do not make as colossal a mess of it as I have this one.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Life

“He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, Passion

“The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself.

No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Shoe, Mathematics, Learning, Housing

“Vin: I don't know -- and it's all your fault, you know. I used to understand everything. Now it's all confused.

Kelsier: Yes, we've messed you up right properly.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Understanding

“But as I have noticed on more than one occaision, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dexter in the Dark

Source: Dexter in the Dark

Life, Way

“Each time I think there is no place lower to go, I find that there is at least one place that will mess you up worse than you were.”

Walter Dean Myers (1937–2014) American writer

Source: Lockdown

Thinking, Time

“Because she was raw and uncertain, and she liked to keep all the messy parts of herself to herself…. As much as Lena liked to hide the mess and display the finished product, by this point she was all mess and no product.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

Parting

“She learned to love him before he thought it was even possible, so he didn't have a chance to hide & mess it up & while it was a little scary at times, mainly he could not even imagine the world without her there.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Trusting Soul

Love, World, Imagination, Learning

“Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Life, People, Parent, Strong

“You can have Jesus in your spirit and have an outrageous mess in your soul, and if you don't know what that's called, it's called religion.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Religion, Soul

“By the end of that first day, what I'd made was a big mess. But if chaos is a necessary step in the organization of one's universe, that I was well on my way.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

Way, Universe

“But the thing that makes me really messed up is the contradiction: when I'm not hating myself, I feel righteous and victmized. Like the world is so unfair.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Hate, World, Feeling

“Now that this mess is almost behind me – I just have one last request: HBO, when you make the movie about this whole NBC late night fiasco, I’d like to be played by Academy-Award winning actress Tilda Swinton.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

January 22, 2010 Monologue Variety, 23 Jan 2010 http://weblogs.variety.com/on_the_air/ The Tonight Show

Night

“These are smart people;
They receive a mess from the east, and a good life from the west;
They never rush because only life rushes;
They are not interested in what awaits after tomorrow;
What is meant to be will come, and little of it depends on them;
When they are together they are in trouble, for this they do not like to be together often;
They rarely trust anyone, but it’s easiest to fool them with nice words;
They do not resemble heroes, but they are not easily scared with threats;
They pay attention to nothing, they care not of what happens around them;
And then out of nowhere suddenly everything interests them, they flip everything and look around;
Then they become sleepers again and do not like to remember what came to pass;
They are scared of change because it often brings evil;
They are easily fed up with a man, even if he does them good;Strange people;
They talk bad about you but love you, kiss you on the cheek but hate you;
Laugh at noble deeds but remember them;
They spend most of their life on spite and goodness;
And don’t know which is stronger when;
Evil, good, gentle, raw, unable to move on, stormy, open, hidden;
They are all this and everything in between;
And most importantly they are mine, and I am theirs;
And everything I’m saying; I’m saying about myself.”

Meša Selimović (1910–1982) Yugoslav-Bosnian writer

Poem

Love, Life, Hate, People

“You mess with people’s religion and you mess with fire. Even people who don’t much give a damn. Religion is something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away. And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 38, “Juniper: The Storm” (p. 390)

People, Religion

“I've repeatedly warned we must avoid the extremists: those who say we should pull out our troops in Vietnam immediately, those who say we should escalate and go right into North Vietnam… I tell you, we should continue doing what we have been: just messing around.”

Pat Paulsen (1927–1997) United States Marine

Unidentified press conference, 1968 Featured in Pat Paulsen for President (1968), part 2 of 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbP0ufyax5A&feature=relmfu, 01:01 ff (10:01 ff in full program)

“Despite his reputation as one of America's foremost "serious" filmmakers, Oliver Stone's name under the "director" caption does not guarantee a good movie. I learned that lesson while enduring the seemingly-endless tedium of The Doors, and was reminded of it during some of the long, drawn-out portions of JFK. However, nothing that Stone has directed — or misdirected — prepared me for the grotesque mess that is Natural Born Killers.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1509 of Natural Born Killers (1994). One-and-a-half star reviews

Nature, Learning

“What makes The Joker tick I wonder?” Fredric said. “I mean what are his real motivations?”
“Consider him at any level of conduct,” Bruce said slowly, “in the home, on the street, in interpersonal relations, in jail—always there is an extraordinary contradiction. He is dirty and compulsively neat, aloof and desperately gregarious, enthusiastic and sullen, generous and stingy, a snappy dresser and a scarecrow, a gentleman and a boor, given to extremes of happiness and despair, singularly well able to apply himself and capable of frittering away a lifetime in trivial pursuits, decorous and unseemly, kind and cruel, tolerant yet open to the most outrageous varieties of bigotry, a great friend and an implacable enemy, a lover and abominator of women, sweet-spoken and foul-mouthed, a rake and a puritan, swelling with hubris and haunted by inferiority, outcast and social climber, felon and philanthropist, barbarian and patron of the arts, enamored of novelty and solidly conservative, philosopher and fool, Republican and Democrat, large of soul and unbearably petty, distant and brimming with friendly impulses, an inveterate liar and astonishingly strict with petty cash, adventurous and timid, imaginative and stolid, malignly destructive and a planter of trees on Arbor Day—I tell you frankly, the man is a mess.”
“That’s extremely well said Bruce,” Fredric stated. “I think you’ve given a very thoughtful analysis.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“I was paraphrasing what Mark Schorer said about Sinclair Lewis,” Bruce replied.
“The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”.
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Women, Happiness, Fools, Art

“Good manners. They're forgotten in America. I think it's bad manners to stand around in public with ripped jeans and your hair in a mess, holding a Starbucks.”

Dita Von Teese (1972) American burlesque dancer, model and actress

5-Minute interview http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/the-5minute-interview-dita-von-teese-burlesque-artiste-424723.html (18 November 2006).

Thinking

“I do not want to avoid immersing myself in trouble — to be a mess — to struggle out of it. I want to invent, to discover, to imagine, to speculate, to improvise — to seize the hazardous in order to be inspired. I want to experience the manifestation of the absolute — the manifestation of the unexpected in an extreme and unique relation. I know that only by following my creative instincts in an act of creative destruction will I be able to find it.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

Statement of April 1950, as quoted in Hans Hofmann (1998), ed. Helmut Friedel and Tina Dickey
1950s

Imagination

“I was still in Europe at the time. Truman said he had the authority to relieve him and he did it. I have never made up my mind whether he was right or not, but I happened to be with a British unit the night we learned of MacArthur's dismissal. The British had a brigade in Korea at the time and the British officers in the Mess were very anti-MacArthur and celebrating his demise. I think MacArthur was a magnificent general, but he became more and more insulated from the world by his staff, many of whom had been with him since the Bataan days. I think that was part of the problem. He was not a young man at the time of Korea. I think, perhaps, he got too dependent on his staff officers and certain things happened which were not in MacArthur's best interest… Even after MacArthur was relieved by the President of the United States he had a tickertape parade in New York City and he made two great speeches, one to Congress and one about Duty, Honor, Country. The Duty, Honor, Country speech is one of the greatest ever made by a military man, and he made it without a note at the age of seventy-five. I believe Douglas MacArthur in 1945 could have come home and run for president and won going away. He was worshiped at the end of the war.”

George S. Patton IV (1923–2004) U.S. Army general

Source: The Fighting Pattons (1997) by Brian M. Sobel, p. 67

War, Age, World, Home

“I work just as hard as any other actress around my age, like Scarlett Johansson, but I just don't get the opportunities that they get because people are so distracted by the mess that I created in my life. But that doesn't mean it's going to last forever.”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

Interview interview (2009)

Life, People, Age

““Useful! You want to talk about useful? Have you ever read anything about politics? Economics? You know what keeps a culture alive?”
“Yes,” said Ernest sullenly, while M. Gargotier cleaned up the mess. “People not bothering other people.””

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 8 (p. 135).

People, Reading

“Rebel Rebel, you've torn your dress.
Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess.
Rebel Rebel, how could they know?
Hot tramp, I love you so!”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Rebel Rebel
Song lyrics, Diamond Dogs (1974)

Love

“I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess!”

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) British actress

Source: Audrey Hepburn (2002), p. 46

Dogs, Hell

“As a Scot and a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow, I early developed the notion that he had done this by falling from a tree. As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word "beautiful."”

Norman Maclean (1902–1990) American author and scholar

"A River Runs Through It", p. 2
A River Runs Through It (1976)

God, Beauty, Nature, Tree

“Freedom to create a mess is proportional to your ability to know what "no mess" is and how to get there.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

15 July 2009 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/2645749878 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Freedom

“Her life was a complete mess, true, but it could be straightened out. All it would take was money. Money could straighten out anything, if you had enough of it.”

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 16 (p. 288)

Life, Money

“I told Barack Obama that I wouldn't let the automakers fail. I won't dump this mess on him.”

George W. Bush book Decision Points

In November 2008 https://books.google.com/books?id=iUJTvsUGWOcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=decision+points&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMImu6s8_WEyAIVjNkeCh1oFgyY#v=onepage&q=obama&f=false. 2000s, 2008

“He and Don came up to the corpse of the German truck. The scrounger who'd been messing around there was gone. "Who's that asshole gonna sell his scrap to?" Charlie said. "Us- you wait and see. We're dumb enough to pay good money to put these mothers back on their feet now that we stomped 'em." "Yeah, that's like us, all right," Dom agreed. "We-" The truck blew up. Next thing Charlie knew, he was sprawled on the ground a surprisingly long way from the road. Dom- no, a piece of Dom- lay not far away. Charlie tried to reach out. His arm didn't want to work. WHen he looked down at what was left of himself, he understood why. It didn't hurt. Then, all at once, it did. His shriek bubbled through the blood filling his mouth. Mercifully, blackness enfolded him.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 17

Money, Way, Waiting, Hurt

“Design demands a designer. Frogs don’t turn into princes, and “big bangs” make big messes not neat, orderly universes. There are no facts to support evolutionism. It stands royally naked.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Support, Universe

“For the Second Amendment to do its job, the other side must become much better informed. I watched an action-adventure program last night that asserted that the famous AK-47 — the original peoples' rifle (and Authority's greatest mistake) — is rare in this country, and that the only ones here were originally smuggled in from the Middle East, or possibly from South America. The idiots who wrote this mess seemed unaware that after legal imports — mostly from China — were illegally cut off by executive order, they began to be manufactured here.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Tastes Like Chicken".

People, Night, Country

“I met my maker / I made him cry / And on my shoulder / He asked me why / His people won't fly / Through the storm / I said listen up man, they don't even know you're born
All my people / Right here, right now / D'you know what I mean?
Coming in a mess / Going out in style / I ain't good looking / But I'm someone's child
No one can give me the air that's mine to breathe”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

D'You Know What I Mean
Be Here Now (1997)

People, Cry, Flying

“The mess of my life, the selfishnesses and false turnings and the treacheries, all these things could fall into place, they could become a source of construction rather than a source of chaos, and precisely because I had no other choice.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus (1965), Ch. 27

Life, Falseness, Selfishness

“Katie Couric: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families, who are struggling with healthcare, housing, gas and groceries, allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?Sarah Palin: That's why I say, I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out, but ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping tho— uh, oh, it's got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as— competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Interview with Katie Couric, The Early Show (), quoted in * 2008-09-25
Palin: ‘What The Bailout Does Is Help Those Who Are Concerned About Health Care Reform’
Ryan
Powers
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/09/25/29772/palin-bailout-healthcare/
2008, 2008 interviews with Katie Couric

Money, Family, Help, Parting

“Chemistry has been termed by the physicist as the messy part of physics, but that is no reason why the physicists should be permitted to make a mess of chemistry when they invade it.”

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England

As quoted in American Journal of Physics, Vol. 14 | (1946), p. 248

Parting

“Ever since the Industrial Revolution, Western society has benefited from science, logic, and reductionism over intuition and holism. Psychologically and politically we would much rather assume that the cause of a problem is “out there,” rather than “in here.” It’s almost irresistible to blame something or someone else, to shift responsibility away from ourselves, and to look for the control knob, the product, the pill, the technical fix that will make a problem go away.
Serious problems have been solved by focusing on external agents — preventing smallpox, increasing food production, moving large weights and many people rapidly over long distances. Because they are embedded in larger systems, however, some of our “solutions” have created further problems. And some problems, those most rooted in the internal structure of complex systems, the real messes, have refused to go away.
Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical ability and technical brilliance that have been directed toward eradicating them. No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless.
That is because they are intrinsically systems problems-undesirable behaviors characteristic of the system structures that produce them. They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame, see the system as the source of its own problems, and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it.”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Pages 3-4.
Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)

Wisdom, Hunger, War, People

“Unlike most wars, which make rotten fiction in themselves — all plot and no characters, or made-up characters — Vietnam seems to be the perfect mix: the characters make the war, and the war unmakes the characters. The gods, fates, furies had a relatively small hand in it. The mess was man-made, a synthetic, by think tank out of briefing session.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"A Fun-House Mirror" (1972), pp. 107-108
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

God, Fate, War, Thinking

“I think Larry is right to notice that the contradictions are catching the allies up already. It's one of those cases where even before you begin bombing the children, the coalition is falling apart. And that's good news. And I'm very much in favor of it. Some Powell or other is messing up the war.”

Eben Moglen (1959) American law professor and free software advocate

Panel on Public Domain at Duke University Law School, November 10, 2001 http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/mpegcast.html.

War, Children, Thinking

“It’s hard to explain the cost and consequences of environmental pollution and destruction to a six year old. But we are paying a desperate price even now because adults did not heed the instructions of kindergarten: Clean up your own mess; put things back where you found them; don’t take what’s not yours.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

“People know me for my love of food, but I have so much more I want to share. Our show's going to be all about taking a bigger bite out of life. I want people to see themselves in this show because life is full of messes and successes, and getting there is half the fun.”

Rachael Ray (1968) American businessman

Unsourced, About her show

Love, Life, People, Food

“It's obviously a tremendous loss for the state …. I think Livingston's stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess.”

David Vitter (1961) U.S. Senator from Louisiana

In May 1999, Vitter replaced Congressman Bob Livingston after Livingston resigned due to an adultery scandal.
[Konigsmark, Anne Rochell, A Week Of Crisis Impeachment: The Speakership Livingston's Constituents Decision to resign jolts home district, D4, The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, December 20, 1998, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=0EADA4168D35692C, 2007-07-10]

Thinking, Loss

“I never encouraged officers to discuss politics at all, and, as a rule, officers of the navy were exempt from political bias, and considered that it was their duty to heartily support the Government in any measures which might be taken to preserve the Union. This was my view of the subject, and I tried to impress it upon others, and succeeded in excluding politics from the mess-table.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 204

Support

“I taught at a school in Cincinnati with a 0% graduation rate and that was also interesting so I updated from thinking school was beneficial for other people but not beneficial to me, to thinking school was beneficial for maybe some people around the middle – at least some of the better schools – but not beneficial for the vast majority of people, to then actually reading the literature on education and on intelligence and academic accomplishment and symbolic manipulation and concluding "no, school isn't good for anyone". There might be a few schools that are good for people, like there's Blair and there's Stuyvesant and these schools may actually teach people, but school can better be seen as a vaccination program against knowledge than a process for instilling knowledge in people, and of course when a vaccination program messes up, occasionally people get sick and die of the mumps or smallpox or whatever. And when school messes up occasionally people get sick and educated and they lose biological fitness. And in either case the people in charge revise the program and try to make sure that doesn't happen again, but in the case of school they also use that as part of their positive branding and you know maintain a not-very-plausible story about it being intended to cause that effect while also working hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.”

Michael Vassar (1979) President of the Singularity Institute

In an interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cSG0p-uflA with Adam Ford, December 2012

People, Education, School, Intelligence

“Why should I be more ‘cautious, careful,’ as you say? I stay in the big leagues as long as I do because I play only one way. I know I take too many, maybe. I know I should not sometimes dive for the ball—or hit the wall trying to catch it— as much as I do. But you catch the ball, you help your team. You don’t catch it, you don’t help your team. I believe playing, how you say, ‘all out’ has prolonged my career. If a ballplayer starts loafing, he tends to lose that little push that is so necessary, so important. You get lazy, won’t take even the smallest chance; kind of lose interest. Your rhythm, I guess it is, gets all messed up. Fly balls start falling on you, when they should not. And you find yourself not getting around on the ball like you should. Once you lose this ‘little push,’ then it is awfully hard to get back in the groove… get yourself going again. Your ambition – desire – suffers. And you become the kind of ballplayer you don’t want to be.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "‘Never Let Up,’ Says Clemente" by Hal Hayes, in The Atlanta Constitution (Tuesday, May 5, 1970), p. 2-C
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1970</big>

Way, Suffering, Chance, Help

“Well I guess you could say
That he don't even know where to begin
Cause he looked both ways but he was so afraid
Diggin' deeper through the ditch
With every chance he missed
And the mess he made
Cause hate is such a strong word
And every brick he laid
A mistake they say
That his walls are getting taller
His world is getting smaller.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Staple It Together
Song lyrics, In Between Dreams (2005)

Hate, World, Way, Strong

Quotes about mess page 2

Quotes about mess
page 2