Adrienne Rich Quotes

The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of.

Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as Chaos.

There's a certain amount of disorder that has to be reorganized.

I frequently hear our present period described as uncertain, confused, chaotic.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you're getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

Confusion is not an ignoble condition

Every time I've learned something, I've realized there are a hundred more things I don't know about the thing I just learned.

Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.

There is much unexplained in the world. It behooves us to be wary at all times. Just when you think you've got the hang of it, along comes string theory, collateralized debt obligations or Björk's new album, and bam! You're as confused as you were when you first started.

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.

Complexity is not a cause of confusion. It is a result of it.

Every path to a new understanding begins in confusion.

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

It's a very confusing era that we're in.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

It is the future, of course, which politicians grapple with, and that is why politics is so disorderly. Only history clears away some of the debris.

The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.

The world is still a weird place, despite my efforts to make clear and perfect sense of it.

When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.

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.

It's hard to find logic in things sometimes. That's why I can't analyze things too much, because it often doesn't make much sense.

You just look at the world, and you see things unraveling, and you say, 'I wonder what we ought to do?' Things are seldom crystal clear.

The world is noisy and messy. You need to deal with the noise and uncertainty.

Ultimately, it's a pretty confusing moment.

The complexity of the world is so overwhelming and so present to everyone.