Quotes About Order

Even if this little account of mine, this little chronicle seems to disclose secrets that might undermine the nightmarish order of things, it does nothing but support and promulgate that order. Nothing can resist or betray this nightmare because nothing exists that might do anything, that might be anything that could realize a success in that way. The very idea of such a thing is only nonsense and dreams.

My only hope lay in my ability to make a metamorphic recovery, to accept in every way the nightmarish order of things so that I could continue to exist as a successful organism even without the protective nonsense of the mind and the imagination, the protective dream of having any kind of soul or self.

Who knows how many others there were who might say that their existence consisted of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense, a nonsense that had nothing unique about it at all and that had nothing behind it or beyond it except more and more nonsense—a new order of nonsense, perhaps an utterly unknown nonsense, but all of it nonsense and nothing but nonsense.

Order and simplification are the first steps towards the mastery of a subject.

Order and simplification are the first steps towards mastery of a subject

As I face new water, I always ask myself if I ought to fish with a nymph or not. Presumably you don't walk directly into rising trout. Camus said that the only serious question is whether or not to commit suicide. This is rather like the nymph question. It takes weight, a weighted fly, split shot. Casting becomes a matter of spitting this mess out and being orderly about it.

Napoleon said that if it weren't for religion the poor would kill the rich. This may be all you needed to know about any human community. The churches were the real police stations, the real keepers of law and order.

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Trying to introduce the concept of law and order to a people who had never been given reason to trust it, and who therefore found justice in blood feuds—they were so much more honorable, and interesting, and, well, bloody—was a terribly long and frustrating process.

Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science. The existence of consciousness seems to imply that the physical description of the universe, in spite of its richness and explanatory power, is only part of the truth, and that the natural order is far less austere than it would be if physics and chemistry accounted for everything. If we take this problem seriously, and follow out its implications

But it seems to me that, as it is usually presented, the current orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the product of governing assumptions that are unsupported, and that it flies in the face of common sense.

The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness.

Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.

I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered;

the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and the easier repaired when disordered;

a government which cannot preserve the peace, is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing;

The more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered . . . Absolute governments, (tho' the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs; know likewise the remedy; and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures.

A government which cannot preserve the peace is no government at all...

To begin government at the right end.

And a government which cannot preserve the peace is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing;

Very often it happens that one starts in to study some problem, and after gathering a mass of facts pertaining to it, the attempt is made to set them in order, and the conscious effort ends in confusion and disorder. Then the conscious effort is abandoned, and the unconscious which has been at work all the time has a chance to project up into consciousness a perfect plan or outline of the subject.

If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.

It is an old saying that "Order is Heaven's First Law," and like many other old sayings it contains a much deeper philosophy than appears immediately on the surface. Getting things into a better order is the great secret of progress, and we are now able to fly through the air, not because

Charged with the mission of operating beyond the boundaries of civilization with minimal support and no communication from higher authority, they lived and often died by the motto, 'Order first, then law will follow.