207 Confusion Quotes

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit, has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to total disagreement as to all the premises.

Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.

Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.

I put contact lenses in my dog's eyes. They had little pictures of cats on them. Then I took one out and he ran around in circles.

Having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts.

I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night an ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

On the one hand, the Republicans are telling industrial workers that the high cost of food in the cities is due to this government's farm policy. On the other hand, the Republicans are telling the farmers that the high cost of manufactured goods on the farm is due to this government's labor policy. That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick: 'If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em.' But this time it won't work.

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time.

People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.

I am blind, but I am able to read thanks to a wonderful new system known as broil. I'm sorry, I'll just feel that again.

I'm taking Viagra and drinking prune juice- I don't know if I'm coming or going.

How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?

I plugged my phone in where the blender used to be. I called someone. They went 'Aaaaahhhh...'

I was in the first submarine. Instead of a periscope, they had a kaleidoscope. 'We're surrounded.'

I went to a garage sale. 'How much for the garage?' 'It's not for sale.'

Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.

Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study.

Confusion hath fuck his masterpiece.

I couldn't tell if the streaker was a man or a woman because it had a bag on its head.

We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place. Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale. W. takes no notice of this, to me, slightly surprising conversation:Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this, culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, 'And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?'

I'm quite a compulsive person - I only worked this out recently - I'm compulsive, but I'm also very indecisive. I don't know what I want, but I know that I want it now.

The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun between the Representatives and the People. The Court Faction have at length committed them. In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest staggered. The circumstances are in a great measure new. We have hardly any land-marks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we can only follow the spirit of their proceeding in other cases.

Anyone who isn't confused doesn't really understand the situation.

Faced with the nonsense question 'What is the meaning of a word?' and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up. --Austin, Papers 58.

That house, whatever it was, was the embodiment of all the coldness in his mind. Harley said to himself: 'Whatever has been done to me, I've been cheated. Someone has robbed me of something so thoroughly I don't even know what it is. It's been a cheat, a cheat.:'

And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell: and for the first it recoiled baffled; and for the first time glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood - the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth: and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and plunging amid that chaos.

Calvin : What am I supposed to do?

'Listen John-' 'Who's John?' 'You're John.' 'I'm John?' 'Yeah, I changed your name.'

Random: Davey, are you still straight? Revolver Magazine: I think they mean Straight Edge. Davey: Oh, I thought they might have been confused after the 'I blow' comment.

Makes no sense at all Makes no sense to fall Falling As the world falls down Falling Falling Falling in love As the world falls down (down) Falling Falling Falling in love.

George Bush: WHAT?...WHAT?...WHAT?

I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result.

What we need are some dancers. Or maybe...answers? does anybody have any answers?'

'Golly, I don't know. I don't know whether he speaks English or not'

Here I am, Philip, am I indoors or am I out? Do I take my hat off or keep it on?

Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before.

I'm just an old slag who gets up every morning, scratches his head and wonders what he wants to fuck.

Extremists in your midst spread propaganda claiming that the West is engaged in a war against Islam. This propaganda is false, and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of terror.

When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go And you've just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving low, Go ask Alice I think she'll know.

Is earnest enough, may earnest attract or lead to light; Is light enough, if hands in clumsy frenzy, flimsy whimsically, enlist; Is light enough when this bewilderment crying against the dark shuts down the shades? Dilute confusion. Find and explode our mist.

We are like pygmies lost in a maze of haze. We are not at war, we are having a nervous breakdown,again.

If you have a faith, if you've some deep conviction, whether you're a Nazi or a Communist or what the hell else you are - then you can sacrifice yourself and others to your faith. But from the moment you've no faith - from that moment you live in a deep inner confusion - from then on you're exposed to what Strindberg calls 'the powers'.

'Hackey-bag-foot-sack always confused me. I could never figure out what the score was or who was winning, so I'd always get mad and end up kicking it into the lake.'

Dem Franchize Boyz. I know who Franchize Boyz are, but who's Dem? Dem? Which one is Dem?

She thinks I'm Davey Havok! (a random girl comes up and starts hugging Jared and says something to the effect 'AFI is such a great band! I can't believe I'm actually hugging the lead singer'.)

Musically, my dream is to do what Norah Jones did. I can't play the piano, but to sit next to it and just sing.

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.

Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit... right to life liberty and... A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. 'By Jesus I admit I'm stumped,' he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears. (p. 365)

And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinsel windowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you've got to do one of two things... Please mister where's the door to the building? Round the block? Just round the block... one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what's the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There's nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words. (pp. 365-366)

I say good night-night I tuck him in tight. But things are not right. What is this? An infant kiss That sends my body tingling?

I don't know why I'm crying. Am I suspended in Gaffa? Not until I'm ready for you, Not until I'm ready for you Can I have it all.

Well, I couldn't see what was to be, So I just stood there laughing.

Oh the dawn has come And the song must be sung And the flowers are melting. What kind of language is this?

What is it, what can it possibly be about blowjobs and golf?

Most of us are pawns in a game of love we don't understand.

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes: A thing, as the Bellman remarked, That frequently happens in tropical climes, When a vessel is, so to speak, 'snarked.'

East is west, up is down, and being falsely arrested for getting your C.O.'s throat cut is a simplification. I must be on Barrayar.

Well, I was missing my earplugs. And the way that I found out why they're missing is because the little Elmo -- his five pounds -- came in to the bedroom and deposited something on -- he came in from outside, he put something on the rug and was going to eat it. And I walked over and it was an earplug that had already been in and back out -- and apparently so delicious ... he wanted it again!

Excuse me, is this England? (while in a Hitler costume, after crash landing in England at the height of the Battle of Britian)

The guy was dead as hell. He lay on the floor in his pajamas with his brains scattered all over the rug and my gun was in his hand. I kept rubbing my face to wipe out the fuzz that clouded my mind but the cops wouldn't let me. One would pull my hand away and shout a question at me that made my head ache even worse and another would slap me with a wet rag until I felt like I had been split wide open.

I was gonna get a candy bar; the button I was supposed to push was 'HH', so I went to the side, I found the 'H' button, I pushed it twice. Fuckin'...potato chips came out man, 'cause they had a 'HH' button, for Christ's sakes! You need to let me know. I'm not familiar with the concept of 'HH'. I did not learn my AA-BB-CC's. God god dammit dammit.'

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.

have I been blind have I been lost inside myself and my own mind hypnotized mesmerized by what my eyes have seen?

Seems I keep getting this story twisted. So where's Neil when you need him?

'I am Stephen Stills.' -- Replying to a audience member who yelled for his fellow CSNY member at a show in 1978.

You'll keep looking around for something, something you were looking for, but you can't find it, and you can't remember what it was.

Is there any hope that you can explain to me why this makes sense?

What do I tell him? Tell him that I will see him. She was startled. She was confused. She abandoned words, and sang her confusion. The song was meek and uncontrolled, for she would never be a master, not even a teacher, but wordlessly she asked Nniv why he would even listen to such a man, why he would risk have the rest of mankind think, the songhouse treats all men alike, judging only on merit, not on power - except for Mikal.

Only maybe he did get it. The joke wasn't men, the joke was people who didn't know what they wanted to give or get and so kept disappointing and being disappointed.

And it's a strange condition, And life in prison, It's got me outta my head And I don't know what I came for. ~ 'Strange Condition'

And he says 'I know about your man' ...and their hearts will broken if you can't decide between them. ~ 'So Much Work'

Oh Billie I want you so, I'm trying to meet you. Too many things they don't know, too many repeatings, of beatings. ~ 'Closet'

I've twisted and turned them every way, And can see no ending to our play.

Sometimes I hear stuff like 'Hey man, wheres your skateboard, dude?' from people who think I'm Christian Slater.

But what they fought each other for I could not well make out.

[Beep] Hold on, what is this? Oh, it's a gun - OK, get on the plane.

Some of the bombs were little yellow bombs, and some of the little food packages were little yellow packages. Now you're playing survivor the real game. 'Um, Bob I was here yesterday, um, I going to go with this one today.'

I'll never forget the time I tried Cocaine. Horrible experience. Of course, I was on Acid at the time... (Monologue from his Saturday Night Live appearance)

'I feel that physical beauty connects to the depths of our animalistic selves, and I don't know whether that's good or bad or what. but it's very confusing.'

Can you imagine some poor welfare recipient in Arizona doesn't know what's up, doesn't know why the check's not as big, doesn't know why the food stamps don't stick to whatever he tries to mail?

'Great-grandfather died under strange circumstances. He opened a vein in his bath.' 'I never knew baths had veins,' protested Gabrilowitsch.' 'I never knew his great-grandfather had a ba-' began Falcovsky derisively.

I felt ill at ease with all this air about me, lost before the confusion of innumerable prospects.

Poor juvenile solutions, explaining nothing. No need then for caution, we may reason on to our heart's content, the fog won't lift.

At no moment do I know what I'm talking about, nor of whom, nor of where, nor how, nor why, but I could employ fifty wretches for this sinister operation and still be short of the fifty-first, to close the circuit, that I know, without knowing what it means.