David Riesman Quotes

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, it could be that I've lost my way.

We were wavering around like a ship without a sail.

Every orientation presupposes a disorientation.

There have been times that I have found myself in places, and I don't know how I got there, and I don't actually know where I am.

What's clarity like? Try to remember that funny feeling inside your head when you had math problems too difficult to solve: the faint buzzing noise in your ears, a heaviness on both sides of your skull, and the sensation that your brain is twitching inside your cranium like a fish on the beach. This is the opposite sensation of clarity. Yet for many people of my era, as they aged, this sensation became the dominant sensation of their lives. It was as though day-to-day twentieth century living had become an unsolvable algebraic equation.

I want it clearly understood that I'm totally confused.

I was so full of sleep at the time that I left the true way.

Someone ... tell us what's important, because we no longer know.

I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.

Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps because their footprints had been swept away.

How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?

I know one thing for certain; it is much harder to tell whether you are lost than whether you were lost, for, on many occasions, where you are going is exactly where you are. On the other hand, if you often find that where you've been is not at all where you should have gone, and, since it's much more difficult to find your way back from someplace you've never left, I suggest you go there immediately and then decide.

I had totally lost my way. I lost focus. I lost myself.

sometimes we have absolutely no idea where we are, we need the smallest clue to show us where to begin.

Acknowledging that sometimes, often at very crucial times, you really have no idea where you are going or even where the path lies. A the same time, you can very well know something about where you are now (even if it is knowing that you are lost, confused, enraged or without hope).

Life is funny isn’t it? Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, just when you finally begin to plan something, get excited about something, and feel like you know what direction you’re heading in, the paths change, the signs change, the wind blows the other way, north is suddenly south, and east is west, and you’re lost. It is so easy to lose your way, to lose direction. And that’s with following all the signposts

By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.

Humans have a habit of running faster when they have lost their way.

The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?I think one of the reasons why things are getting blurry is because there is not much meaning.

Whatever it was, my mom said, I'm going to seek out more. And so I was constantly confused, which is sometimes a little bit, you know, disorienting. But I feel like it leads to a way more colorful life.

God, it's like reality's completely shifted on me. I used to think I was standing on such solid ground. If I wanted something badly enough, I just worked like hell for it. Now I can't decide what to do, which move to make. All the things I counted on aren't there for me anymore.

We lost our way, our society lost our way.

Thank you, Sam," he said in a cracked whisper. "How far is there to go?" I don't know," said Sam, "because I don't know where we're going.

It's just as difficult to reach a destination you don't have, as it is to come back from a place you've never been.