Quotes about order
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“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

“You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

“I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Source: The Cornel West Reader

Love, World, Hope, Idea

“Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Hunger, Way, Motivation

“I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Books, Understanding, Learning

“That's the last order I'll ever give you Captain. Don't you dare ignore it.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Opal Deception

“We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.”

Kent Nerburn (1946) Author

Dreams

“Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d'être violent et original dans vos œuvres. To Gertrude Tennant (December 25, 1876)
Correspondence
Variant: Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Life, Back To Work

“Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.”

Zadie Smith book The Autograph Man

Source: The Autograph Man

Friendship

“I've done smarter things in my life. Once, for example, I threw myself out of a moving car in order to take on a truckload of lycanthropes singlehandedly."
~Harry Dresden”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

Life, Cars

“No matter how bad things get, you can always see the beauty in them. The worse things get, the more you have to make yourself see the magic in order to survive.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Pink Smog

Beauty

“In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

Change

“Frank Zhang! I, Jason Grace, praetor of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata, give you my final order: I resign my post and give you emergency field promotion to praetor, with the full powers of that rank. Take command of this legion!”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Truth, Soul, Past, Dead

“You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it's a catch-22: all of those things you're willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“Happiness is like those palaces in fairytales whose gates are guarded by dragons: We must fight in order to conquer it.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Happiness, Fairytale, Fight

“[…][I]f you adapted too much in order to deal with them, you ran the risk of forgetting who you were and you could end up being neither and nothing.”

Anne Bishop book Written in Red

Source: Written in Red

Forgetting

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Law, Penalty, Communication, Reality

“And I'll wash your other clothes. Shall I also order you a new set of leathers?"
"Don't-" Wrath shut his mouth. "Sure. That'd be great. And, ah, could you get me some boxers? Black? XXL?”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Clothes

“Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Feeling, Autumn, Light

“If we wait until life is in order before making our decision, we'll never make any”

Judith McCoy Miller (1944) American writer

Source: An Uncertain Dream

Life, Decision, Waiting

“In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water.”

Natsuo Kirino book Grotesque

Source: Grotesque

Women, Men, Thinking, Water

“Coach Hedge came pounding up the stairs with Hazel at his hooves.

“Where are they?” he demanded. “Who do I kill?”

“No killing!” Annabeth ordered. “Just defend the ship!”

“But they interrupted a Chuck Norris movie!”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Way, Understanding, Thinking, Country

“That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“However, because they have no actual interests of their own (or if they do, they squelch them in order to fit in) and merely pursue those that they think will look best on their college apps, they're zombies.”

Meg Cabot book Airhead

Source: Airhead

Thinking

“A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“Sure, in a ninja's world, those who violate the rules and fail to follow orders… are lower than garbage. However… those who do not care for and support their fellows… are even lower than that!" - Obito Uchiha”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

Source: Naruto, Vol. 27: Departure

World, Support

“I can remember my first one-night stand like it was yesterday. Well, maybe not the first. Or the second… or the fifth. I'll just begin with what I can remember and not concern myself with order.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Night

“You grew up, became a man, had to adjust to taking less than you hoped for; you discovered the dream-machine had a big OUT OF ORDER sign on it.”

Stephen King Dreamcatcher

Source: Dreamcatcher

Dreams, Hope

“There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

The Bridge Across Forever (1984)
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Learning

“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Feeling, Understanding, Moving On

“I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Happiness, Thinking, Fight

“Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.”

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

Source: To Bedlam and Part Way Back

Beauty

“Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

12 July 1827.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Variant: Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Context: I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in their best order.

“And ordering me around is exactly the wrong way to make me do what you want.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Betrayals

Way

“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”

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

“In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The 'anything whatever' then becomes the sophisticated acme of value.”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

Source: Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“You seem to be under the impression that I work for you and you can give me orders. Let me fix that." I hung up.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

“And that leaves me with the belief that miracles, no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occur without regard to the natural order of things.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nature

“The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs… one step at a time.”

Joe Girard (1928–2019) American salesman

Time, Success, For Team

“The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Alloy of Law

Leadership, For Men

“I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

Henry, Act II, scene V
Source: The Real Thing (1982)

Children, World, Thinking, Dead

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Happiness, Dead

“The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

“The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Democracy, Time

“Once I learned, I went online and ordered every romance novel I could find. They're fairy tales for grown-ups.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Learning

“Order is the key to all problems.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Problem

“I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time. But it's not like that. It happens overnight.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Thinking, Time

“I'm LEP. A captain. No rent-a-cop gnome is going to stand in the way of my orders.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Arctic Incident

Way

“But he can also be incredibly sweet. And I know that, deep down, I mean the world to him." "Deep down? That sounds like settling to me. You shouldn't have to venture deep down in order to get to love.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, World

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

“For once, you're going to hear something that doesn't fit into your neat, compartmentalized world of order and logic and reason.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World

“Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Way, Universe

“… sometimes you have to put your fears in order…”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Fear

“There are two questions that we have to ask ourselves. The 1st is " Where am I going?" and the 2nd is "Who will go with me?"
If you ever get these questions in the wrong order, you are in trouble.”

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) American writer

Question

“In order for us to liberate the energy of our strength, our weakness must first have a chance to reveal itself.”

Paulo Coelho book The Witch of Portobello

Source: The Witch of Portobello

Chance

“If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.”

Kathleen Norris (1880–1966) American writer

Failure, Change, Loss

“We see in order to move; we move in order to see.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

“So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Variant: The fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.
Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Hurt, Personality, Hurtful

“Cats randomly refuse to follow orders to prove they can.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Cats

“I spend most of my waking hours confronting and destroying things that I fear. A thousand-year-old master vampire was a tall order, but a girl's got to have a goal.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Guilty Pleasures

Source: Guilty Pleasures

Fear, Girl

“Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Source: Second Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow

Life, Game, Victory

“An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

“That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

History, Understanding, Question, Problem

“Please be peaceful. We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence, I want you to love your enemies… for what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just -- and God is with us.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Love, God, Peace, Law

“Having a baby is painful in order to show how serious a thing life is.”

Lisa See book Shanghai Girls

Source: Shanghai Girls

Life, Pain, Baby

“You write in order to change the world… if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

People, World, Way, Reality

“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Way

“No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people's eyes, to reveal the marvels around.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

People, Light

“Sometimes I didn't even feel like getting out of bed. I took to wearing my days-of-the-week panties out of order. It could be Monday and I'd have on underwear saying Thursday. I just didn't care.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Feeling

“You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

“If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.”

Howard Thurman book Jesus and the Disinherited

Source: Jesus and the Disinherited

“A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Men, God, People

“Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed”

Paulo Freire book Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1

“bad things, like good things don't happen any more often than they ought to by chance. the universe has no mind, no feelings, and no personality, so it doesn't do things in order to either hurt or please you. bad things happen because things happen.”

Richard Dawkins book The Magic of Reality

Source: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

Feeling, Universe, Chance, Hurt

“I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Dead

“A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

Love, Reality, Loyalty

“In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, "Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl."”

David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

I'm guessing this comes from having watched too many Second World War movies.

Essay, "Easy, tiger". p.80
Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013)

Lie, Girl

“I wanted to remember in order to be able to return.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“…deep-diving love, a love that excavates you. It’s something you have to have before you die in order to have lived.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Love

“You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Dead

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty

Men

“In order to deal with reality successfully - to pursue and achieve the values which his life requires - man needs self-esteem; he needs to be confident of his efficacy and worth.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

Life, Confidence, Reality

“Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don't love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering and reordering the chaos of experience.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Way

“But the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in order to find your comfort.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

World, Help

“My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?

Bread, of course.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Family

“Don't assume the world evolved in the order in which you discovered it.”

Raymond E. Feist (1945) Novelist

World

“The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Love, Beauty, Sun, Box

“In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

“The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: Miller, H. (1969). “Creation,” The Henry Miller Reader. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation. p.33.
Context: Through art then, one finally establishes contact with reality: that is the great discovery. Here all is play and invention; there is no solid foothold from which to launch the projectiles which will pierce the miasma of folly, ignorance and greed. The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another. The power which we long to possess, in order to establish the good, the true and the beautiful, would prove to be, if we could have it, but the means of destroying one another. It is fortunate that we are powerless.

World, Beauty, Peaceful