Barack Obama Quotes

No one welcomes chaos, but why crave stability and predictability?

All this strategy is, in truth, an attempt to impose individual will upon a recalcitrant world …. Strategy is often simply a charade—erzatz order imposed on a stubbornly disordered world.

I always wanted to know what I'd face next, even though that was maybe a bit detrimental to spontaneity. Structuring my life and avoiding chaos was more important.

You think you want the blue skies, the open road, but really you want the tunnel, you want to know how the story ends.

I love people who try to keep the world in control - because the world is inherently not in control.

Read the news section of the newspaper and there is confusion and uncertainty, a world buffeted by large forces people neither understand nor control. But turn to the sports section and it's all different.

People seem to be looking for discipline in a topsy-turvy world.

I like having a routine, because everything else... is so unpredictable.

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

We're all seeking order. We're all seeking control.

You always have to wrestle with chaos.

Politics is like roller skating. You go partly where you want to go, and partly where the damned things take you.

The world is enormously dangerous and scary. I worry very much for my daughter. I'm not sure we're in control any more, and I think the Internet is partly responsible for that.

I always liked situations where there were very clear rules of what to do.

Predictability can eventually be defended.

I can't stand things being out of place.

there must be a routine to life, a framework to hang life on. Routines were what kept you sane, gave you something to do at this moment and at that, definite places to go, positive things to do. Abandon it and that way madness lies.

It’s all about control. Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to become master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. Parkinson’s is a perfect metaphor for lack of control. Every unwanted movement in my hand or arm, every twitch that I cannot anticipate or arrest, is a reminder that even in the domain of my own being, I am not calling the shots. I tried to exert control by drinking myself to a place of indifference, which just exacerbated the sense of miserable hopelessness.

Just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away with you.

I think you've got to accept that certain things are in process that you can't change, that you can't overwhelm. The chaos of our cities, the randomness of our lives, the unpredictability of where you're going to be in ten years from now - all of those things are weighing on us, and yet there is a certain glimmer of control. If you act a certain way, and talk a certain way, you're going to draw certain forces to you.

But all I could think of was how when nothing made sense and hadn't for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of.

There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.

We negotiate with chaos for some sense of satisfaction.

In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day?

I don't think there's a lot of discipline right now.