75 Quotes About Embracing Chaos

In a world that often feels unpredictable and tumultuous, embracing chaos can be both a liberating and enlightening journey. Chaos, with its inherent lack of order, challenges our need for control and invites us to find beauty in the unexpected. By exploring the wisdom of thinkers, writers, and leaders who have embraced this paradigm shift, we can uncover profound insights and transformative perspectives. This collection of 75 quotes about embracing chaos encourages us to welcome uncertainty, find strength in vulnerability, and transform disorder into a source of creative energy. Dive into this curated compilation and discover how chaos can become a catalyst for growth, resilience, and innovation.

1. “Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.” - Chuck Palahniuk

2. “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.” - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

3. “Eve: All this riot and uproar, V... is this Anarchy? Is this the Land of Do-As-You-Please? V: No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means "without leaders", not "without order". With anarchy comes an age or ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order... this age of ordung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course... This is not anarchy, Eve. This is chaos.” - Alan Moore

4. “Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting 'All Gods are bastards.” - Terry Pratchett

5. “Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.” - Edward Bellamy

6. “It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful.” - Hiromu Arakawa

7. “that great condenser of moral chaos, The City.” - Robert Hughes

8. “It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.” - Douglas R. Hofstadter

9. “I had hoped that the rest of the world would stand still while I got myself together again, but Chaos and Tragedy had marched into other lives close to mine as well.” - Julie Metz

10. “If chaos is a necessary step in the organization of one's universe, then I was well on my way.” - Wendelin Van Draanen

11. “In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.” - Jeanette Winterson

12. “One person's data is another person's noise.” - K.C. Cole

13. “The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

14. “The Pentacle - The ancients envisioned their world in two halves - masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and Yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced there was chaos.” - Dan Brown

15. “It’s a lack of clarity that creates chaos and frustration. Those emotions are poison to any living goal.” - Steve Maraboli

16. “Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being clever enough to organize the world. (p 2)” - Brandon Sanderson

17. “I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.” - Rabih Alameddine

18. “It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else.” - John Green

19. “Wat zou José Saramago over Carlos zeggen?Dit.'Mensen als deze heb je overal, ze besteden hun tijd, of de tijd die er in hun ogen naast het leven voor rest, aan het verzamelen van postzegels, munten, medailles, vazen, ansichtkaarten, luciferdoosjes, boeken, horloges, sportshirts, handtekeningen, stenen, kleien beeldjes, lege frisblikjes, engeltjes, cactussen, libretto's, aanstekers, vulpennen, uilen, speeldozen, flessen, bonsais, schilderijen, bierglazen, pijpen, kristallen obelisken, porseleinen eenden, antiek speelgoed of carnavalsmaskers, en dat doen ze vermoedelijk uit iets watje metafysische angst zou kunnen noemen, omdat het idee van de chaos als alleenheerser over het heelal onverdraaglijk voor hen is, misschien proberen ze daarom met hun bescheiden vermogens en zonder goddelijke hulp enige orde te scheppen in de wereld, waar ze voor korte tijd nog in slagen ook, maar alleen zolang ze hun verzameling in stand kunnen houden, want op de dag dat daar de klad in komt, en die dag komt altijd, hetzij door de dood, hetzij doordat de verzamelaar er genoeg van heeft, is alles terug bij af, loopt alles weer door elkaar.' ” - Dimitri Verhulst

20. “Our listeners asked us:"What is chaos?"We're answering:"We do not comment on economic policy.” - John Vaillant

21. “The truth is sealed. Life goes on. Till one day, history changed... Like thief in the night, aliens invade human. Chaos happens prior to the new order of coexistence. The truth is sealed. Life goes on. Till one day, history changed.” - Toba Beta

22. “Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.” - Terence McKenna

23. “There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.” - José Saramago

24. “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” - Ray Bradbury

25. “I once had been in the middle of a mass chaos and terrible riots.There, I witnessed how men were truly such as beasts unleashed.” - Toba Beta

26. “No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.” - Philip K. Dick

27. “All the most powerful emotions come from chaos -fear,anger,love- especially love. Love is chaos itself. Think about it! Love makes no sense. It shakes you up and spins you around. And then, eventually , it falls apart.” - Kirsten Miller

28. “Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?” - Emil Cioran

29. “They have the unique ability to listen to one story and understand another.” - Pandora Poikilos

30. “Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician's karmic calamity.” - T.F. Hodge

31. “I'm beginning to think that to hope isn't the same as to expect something. To hope is to believe that life is an acceptable chaos.” - Goenawan Mohamad

32. “I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: "But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primogenial chaos? Isn't affirming God's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?” - Umberto Eco

33. “I like it that order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me.” - Elizabeth Moon

34. “I want you here. I don't care if it's a hundred degrees and every blade of grass dies. Without you, none of that matters to me.” - Kami Garcia

35. “If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles -- a fine lesson; and all Nature's wildness tells the same story -- the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort -- each and all are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.” - John Muir

36. “(Q: From an outsider’s perspective, what you call “chaos magick” has a lot of rules, discipline, and order involved, and doesn’t seem very chaotic at all. What would you say to such a person?)A: I differentiate sternly between Chaos and Entropy. Only highly ordered and structured systems can display complex creative and unpredictable behaviour, and then only if they have the capacity to act with a degree of freedom and randomness. Systems which lack structure and organisation usually fail to produce anything much, they just tend to drift down the entropy gradient. This applies both to people and to organisations.” - Peter J. Carroll

37. “The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.” - B.F. Skinner

38. “It partook ... of eternity ... there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had once today, already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures.” - Virginia Woolf

39. “Tiny details imperceptible to us decide everything!” - Winfried Georg Sebald

40. “People are, at their heart, constantly moving toward a state of entropy. Much like this ship. We’re all spiraling out of control.” - Beth Revis

41. “[Pope] Clement waved his hands in irritation as if to dismiss the very idea. "The world is crumbling into ruin. Armies are marching. Men and women are dying everywhere, in huge numbers. Fields are abandoned and towns deserted. The wrath of the Lord is upon us and He may be intending to destroy the whole of creation. People are without leaders and direction. They want to be given a reason for this, so they can be reassured, so they will return to their prayers and their obiediences. All this is going on, and you are concerned about the safety of two Jews?” - Iain Pears

42. “Stop blaming outside circumstances for your inside chaos.” - Steve Maraboli

43. “In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relive the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption.” - Tom Robbins

44. “Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It's their favorite word, next to 'power.' 'Gotta stabilize the political situation in Southeast Asia, gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government' and so forth.Stabilization to them means order, uniformity, control. And that's a half-witted and potentially genocidal misconception. No matter how thoroughly they control a system, disorder invariably leaks into it. Then the managers panic, rush to plug the leak and endeavor to tighten the controls. Therefore, totalitarianism grows in viciousness and scope. And the blind pity is, rigidity isn't the same as stability at all. True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.” - Tom Robbins

45. “Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?” - Elisabeth Elliot

46. “The reflection of chaos is creativity.” - Lionel Suggs

47. “To deal with history [life] means to abandon one's self to chaos but to retain a belief in the ordination and the meaning. It is a very serious task.” - Hermann Hesse

48. “Nature" doesn't really have intentions, per se. Nature is a drunk waking up from a weekend bender, ambling through a messy kitchen in a pair of mismatched slippers, seeing its car in the neighbor's pool and saying, "Ah good. It was dirty. Just the thing.” - Pat Connid

49. “I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.” - Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm

50. “Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.” - Robert Higgs

51. “Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

52. “There is no part of one’s beliefs about oneself which cannot be modified by sufficiently powerful psychological techniques. There is nothing about oneself which cannot be taken away or changed. The proper stimuli can, if correctly applied, turn communists into fascists, saints into devils, the meek into heroes, and vice-versa. There is no sovereign sanctuary within ourseles which represents our real nature. There is nobody at home in the internal fortress. Everything we cherish as our ego, everything we believe in, is just what we have cobbled together out of the accident of our birth and subsequent experiences. With drugs, brainwashing, and other techniques of extreme persuasion, we can quite readily make a man a devotee of a different ideology, the patriot of a different country, or the follower of a different religion.” - Peter J. Carroll

53. “What is discipline? Discipline means creating an order within you. As you are, you are a chaos.” - Osho

54. “-and then what happened?- I asked him, but I had no desire to know. Whatever it was, it has to be ugly.” - Michael F. Moore

55. “Strategy is methodical, but the one who steers chaos and randomness can steer God.” - Lionel Suggs

56. “One cannot shape the world without being reshaped in the process. Each gain of power requires its own sacrifice.” - Phil Hine

57. “I want us to enter into the laughter of the God that is before, during and after the experience of being human, to swim in grace, to revel in messiness, to find joy in the suffering and love in the chaos.” - Tobin Wilson

58. “At the edge of chaos, unexpected outcomes occur. The risk to survival is severe.” - Michael Crichton

59. “Upset The Established Order Of Your Life And Everything Becomes Chaos...To A Degree That You Wont Be Able To Differentiate Between Mere Illusions And Solid Reality” - Sherif A. El-Mawardy

60. “Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality.” - Robert McKee

61. “But when you have order, you don't need Gods. When everything is well ordered and disciplined then nothing is unexpected. If you understand everything,' I said carefully, 'then there's no room left for magic. It's only when you're lost and frightened and in the dark that you call on the Gods, and they like us to call on them. It makes them feel powerful, and that's why they like us to live in chaos.” - Bernard Cornwell

62. “We are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.” -” - Terence McKenna

63. “Chaos is complexity viewed through a reductionist filter.” - Silvia Hartmann

64. “design is so important because chaos is so hard” - Jules Feiffer

65. “The neighbor's flock has taken advantage of the chaos, and I think that's pretty smart.” - Jeanne Marie Laskas

66. “the hinder portion scalding-house good eating Curve B in addition to the usual baths and ablutions military police sumptuousness of the washhouse risking misstatements kept distances iris to iris queen of holes damp, hairy legs note of anger chanting and shouting konk sense of "mold" on the "muff" sense of "talk" on the "surface" konk2 all sorts of chemical girl who delivered the letter give it a bone plummy bare legs saturated in every belief and ignorance rational living private client bad bosom uncertain workmen mutton-tugger obedience to the rules of the logical system Lord Muck hot tears harmonica rascalthat's chaos can you produce chaos? Alice asked certainly I can produce chaos I said I produced chaos she regarded the chaos chaos is handsome and attractive she said and more durable than regret I said and more nourishing than regret she said” - Donald Barthelme

67. “She had acquired some of his gypsy ways, some of his nonchalance, his bohemian indiscipline. She had swung with him into the disorders of strewn clothes, spilled cigarette ashes, slipping into bed all dressed, falling asleep thus, indolence, timelessness...A region of chaos and moonlight. She liked it there.” - Anais Nin

68. “My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?” - Arthur Rimbaud

69. “If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment-still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I've drunk it all!” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov

70. “Isn't it funny how true peace describes war and chaos?” - Lionel Suggs

71. “Where the Divine and the Human Meet" shows how important it is to meet the world with the creativity of an artist, particularly in these uncertain times: "What do we do with chaos? Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to live with chaos and indeed to dance with it as we listen to it and attempt some ordering. Artists wrestle with chaos, take it apart, deconstruct and reconstruct from it. Accept the challenge to convert chaos into some kind of order, respecting the timing of it all, not pushing beyond what is possible—combining holy patience with holy impatience--that is the role of the artist. It is each of our roles as we launch the twenty-first century because we are all called to be artists in our own way. We were all artists as children. We need to study the chaos around us in order to turn it into something beautiful. Something sustainable. Something that remains".” - Matthew Fox

72. “In the black chaos where the seas and the skies become confused let the projectors blow their white trumpets of silence("Roundness")” - Pierre Drieu la Rochelle

73. “The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out: 'Swine! Swine! Swine!', and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen.” - George Orwell

74. “May feel like you're falling', Tabby, but remember, I'm at the bottom ready to catch you.” - Kristen Ashley

75. “Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos. Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me. Brand new.News.” - Jeanne Marie Laskas