Confuse People Quotes & Sayings

I don't have a death wish. I'm just confused and trying to sort stuff out, trying to find a point to all of this. Life. It confuses the hell out of me. People, they confuse the hell out of me. Hell, I confuse the hell out of myself. — Jessica Sorensen

I think people often confuse success with fame and stardom. — Brenda Blethyn

We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way in which they are practiced in America with capitalism, federalism, and the two-party system, which are not moral principles but simply the preferred and accepted practices of the American people. — J. William Fulbright

I don't think people should confuse fantasy and reality because no one is perfect - we all know that. — Erin Heatherton

Third, it is helpful to seek advice from those who are spiritually mature and solid in their faith. A godly counselor or pastor can assist you in avoiding the common mistakes that confuse many young people. — James C. Dobson

He wondered if today was that day, if he'd wake up different, wake up someone else who remembered him fondly. A new Doctor. He wondered if he'd approve. Would he be more gentle? That might not be so bad. More vengeful? He hoped not. Maybe he'd be a girl. That was distantly possible. Never been a girl. The Corsair had been a girl for a while. New perspective. Confuse people. Keep life interesting. — Nick Harkaway

People who confuse what they wish were true with what is really true create distorted pictures of reality that make it impossible for them to make the best choices. — Ray Dalio

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. — Gore Vidal

Often people that tell others they are "extremely polite" when the situation calls for tact and bluntness are not actually polite people. Instead, they hide behind the word "polite" because they have low self esteem or hidden agendas. Sadly, they impolitely confuse the hell out of everyone, send mixed signals, which then makes people question their sanity and motives. — Shannon L. Alder

Most people confuse "self-knowledge" with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone — C. G. Jung

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
— A.J. Liebling

The umlaut isn't on my birth certificate. I had this book as a child called Chloe and Maude, and there was an umlaut on the e, and I said, I want that! It's a little flair. Just to confuse people even more. — Chloe Sevigny

I can be very polite, and I think that people can confuse that for all sorts of things ... But I'll take that over people assuming that I'm smart just because I'm short and rude. — Amy Adams

Diverting one's attention from the past was not the same as envisioning and embarking upon a future. On the other hand, if the past were razed, the slate wiped clean, maybe fewer people would confuse it with the future, and that at least would be something. — Richard Russo

Because love is continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love.
(in that case my friend Hubl would have pointe out to me, no one loves us more than the police. That's true. Just as every height has its symmetrical depth, so love's interest has ts negative the police's curiosity. We sometimes confuse depth with height, and I can easily imagine lonely people hoping to be taken to the police station from time to time for an interrogation that will enable to talk about themselves.) — Milan Kundera

Love was something I would not have to worry about - the whole mystery of love, heartbreak songs, and family legends. Women who pined, men who went mad, people who forgot who they were and shamed themselves with need, wanting only to be loved by the one they loved. Love was a mystery. Love was a calamity. Love was a curse that had somehow skipped me, which was no doubt why I was so good at multiple-choice tests and memorizing poetry. Sex was a country I been dragged into as an unwilling girl - sex, and the madness of the body. For all that it could terrify and confuse me, sex was something I had assimilated. Sex was a game or a weapon or an addiction. Sex was familiar. But love - love was another country. — Dorothy Allison

Everybody wants to be good, but not many are prepared to make the sacrifices it takes to be great. To many people, being nice in order to be liked is more important. There's equal merit in that, but you must not confuse being good with being liked. — Paul Arden

People confuse goodness with weakness. It is weak people, not good people (goodness demands strength), who are taken advantage of. — Dennis Prager

I always think it's far more admirable to confuse people than it is to reassure them. — Will Sheff

As people age, they confuse changes in themselves with changes in the world, and changes in the world with moral decline - the illusion of the good old days. — Steven Pinker

Love is something that is very personal to each individual based on where they are in their lives. It fluctuates and changes over time. I think there is a massive differentiation between infatuation and love, but people tend to confuse the two. — Paul Wesley

People confuse ego, lust, insecurity with true love. — Simon Cowell

Societies are preoccupied with just about everything other than making good people. For some, it is intelligence. Parents are often more concerned with their children's IQs than their children's characters. And many people confuse higher education with decency and moral insight. — Dennis Prager

I think people sometimes confuse 'catchy' with something that should automatically be a hit in today's world. I mean, obviously we write a lot of stuff that's catchy, that sticks in your head. But that doesn't necessarily mean that middle-school kids are going to want to listen to a song about a lawyer or a Subaru or whatever. — Adam Schlesinger

Perhaps one of the reasons we don't enjoy all these activities as much as we could is because we think activities need to be exciting for us to enjoy them. Many people confuse joy and happiness with excitement. But excitement is not the same as happiness. With joy and happiness we have a sense of satisfaction. There's a feeling of satisfaction in being in the here and now, when you recognize you have so many conditions for happiness in the present moment, whether you're sitting, walking, standing, or working. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Every now and then I like to do as I'm told, just to confuse people. — Tamora Pierce

All human beings seek the happy life, but many confuse the means - for example, wealth and status - with that life itself. This misguided focus on the means to a good life makes people get further from the happy life. The really worthwhile things are the virtuous activities that make up the happy life, not the external means that may seem to produce it. — Epictetus

People confuse economists and economic policy. — Franco Modigliani

Emotions have cycles whereas love endures. Some people confuse emotions, which are ever-changing, with love's durability. — Donna Lynn Hope

I've studied the disease, I've lived in the swamp. It is my informed conclusion that we are suffering, as an ex-great nation, from top-down corporate rot. And that's not just the judgement of an ailing old fart. A lot of people in my Service make a profession of not seeing things in black and white. Do not confuse me with them. I'm a late-onset, red-toothed radical with balls. Still with me? — John Le Carre

So many are obsessed with success that they fail to realize sleep is the best time of day and the second most important activity we do. In fact, it ranks so closely to the first activity, that many people confuse the terms. — Anthony Marais

Let's first all people out there to see what's done and then they will see why I can do about that!? — Deyth Banger

People confuse science and scientists. Science is great, but individual scientists are dangerous. They are human; they are marred by the biases humans have. Perhaps even more. For most scientists are hard-headed, otherwise they would not derive the patience and energy to perform the Herculean tasks asked of them, like spending eighteen hours a day perfecting their doctoral thesis. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I read recently that I was born in Arizona. I wasn't born in Arizona. I was born in New Mexico, but I can understand why people might confuse those two Southwestern desert states. — Baron Vaughn

People who dismiss science in favor of religion sometimes confuse the challenge of rigorously understanding the world with a deliberate intellectual exclusion that leads them to mistrust scientists and, to their detriment, what they discover. — Lisa Randall

The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth. — Alan W. Watts

It's hard for people to see you one way, but you're really the other way, so it's kind of like, 'Who am I, who are you?' Sometimes, I confuse even myself. — Nicole Polizzi

There is something called positive thinking that people often confuse with hope. But it is different. Positive thinking is a state of mind, while hope is a useless state of the heart. Positive thinking is about doing and hope is about feeling. So, positive thinking is what you need. — Stevan V. Nikolic

No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural. — Ian Hamilton Finlay

I had the feeling of something inside me that flipped like a fish in a net. It was hope. As much as I bad-mouth people in general and think the worst of them, I'm secretly waiting for them to surprise me. Try as I might, I haven't been able to give up on them wholly. Even though they are nine and nine-tenths dirt, now and again they are capable of something angelic. I can't say that it restores my faith, because I really had none in the first place, but when it happens it does confuse you. — Marcel Theroux

Nor are introverts necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not. One reason that people confuse the two concepts is that they sometimes overlap (though psychologists debate to what degree). Some psychologists map the two tendencies on vertical and horizontal axes, with the introvert-extrovert spectrum on the horizontal axis, and the anxious-stable spectrum on the vertical. With this model, you end up with four quadrants of personality types: calm extroverts, anxious (or impulsive) extroverts, calm introverts, and anxious introverts. In other words, you can be a shy extrovert, like Barbra Streisand, who has a larger-than-life personality and paralyzing stage fright; or a non-shy introvert, like Bill Gates, who by all accounts keeps to himself but is unfazed by the opinions of others. — Susan Cain

Don't confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy. — Robin Sharma

What can I do but stand with my mouth open, no sound emerging? My lips move and I wave my arms making gestures from the other side of the glass, which I can't penetrate.
... people can speak out of anything, though the struggle takes years. The problem is, whatever I say about the present feels false-nothing contains it all, or catches the depth of things, or their terrible one-dimensionality.
What am I living on? Someone said the other day, "that old irrepressible-impossible- hope." And I thought no, this doesn't feel like hope. But maybe that's what hope is, no shining thing but a kind of sustenance, plain as bread, the ordinary thing that feeds us. How could we confuse this optimism, when it has nothing to do with expecting things to get better?
Hope has to do with continuing, that's all ... I can imagine now, where I couldn't before, this long erosion of faith, this steady drawing from one's strength, until what's left is tenuous, transparent. — Mark Doty

Prayer that is regular confounds both self-importance and the wiles of the world. It is so easy for good people to confuse their own work with the work of creation. It is so easy to come to believe that what we do is so much more important than what we are. It is so easy to simply get too busy to grow. It is so easy to commit ourselves to this century's demand for product and action until the product consumes us and the actions exhaust us and we can no longer even remember why we set out to do them in the first place. — Joan D. Chittister

Most election analysts in the U.S. habitually confuse the sound of money talking with the voice of the people. — Thomas Ferguson

I never want to turn something down because I'm afraid to do it, because of some idea of image or whatever. That was never anything I set out to do. In fact, the opposite, I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make. — Christian Bale

I think referendums are fantastic as long as the question is phrased in a way which is not meant to deliberately confuse or confound people. — Cate Blanchett

Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will- to- action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens. — Arthur Gordon Webster

To some degree, all civilized people are out of touch with reality because we fail to distinguish between the way things are and the way they are described. For politicians this dichotomy has reached extreme proportions, but it affects everyone. We confuse money, which is an abstraction, with real wealth; we confuse the idea of who we are with the actual experience of our organic existence. During — Alan W. Watts

I had to add Oguchi into the list. After all, he's a soccer player - fittest athletes ever. At 6'4 210 pounds, he's one of the most feared men in the world's game.
I've played against a lot of massive defenders. And no one has Oguchi's strength. His shoulders and chest are so big that people confuse him with an NFL player. He can move anyone in the game with one arm, including the best strikers in the world. Guys absolutely fear him. — Charlie Davies

Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find all too hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our encounter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow.
Pity those who seek for shepherds, instead of longing for freedom! An encounter with superior energy is open to anyone but remains far from those who shift responsibility onto others. Our time on earth is sacred and we should celebrate every moment. — Paulo Coelho

A lot of tragedy would be averted if people didn't confuse trust with love. I expect my clients to trust me. I really don't care if they hate me. ~ Brandon Hull — Jayden Hunter

My dear Socrates ... you know why they are putting you to death? It is because you make people feel stupid for blindly following habits, instincts, and traditions. You may be occasionally right. But you may confuse them about things they've been doing just fine without getting in trouble. You are destroying people's illusions about themselves. You are taking the joy of ignorance out of the things we don't understand. And you have no answer; you have no answer to offer them. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

People confuse the subject of the joke with the target of the joke, and they're very rarely the same. — Ricky Gervais

In addition to the gremlins, another thing that gets in the way of meaningful work is the struggle to define who we are and what we do in an honest way. In a world that values the primacy of work, the most common question that we ask and get asked is, "What do you do?" I used to wince every time someone asked me this question. I felt like my choices were to reduce myself to an easily digestible sound bite or to confuse the hell out of people. Now my answer to "What do you do?" is, "How much time do you have?" Most of us have complicated answers to this question. For example, I'm a mom, partner, researcher, writer, storyteller, sister, friend, daughter, and teacher. All of these things make up who I am, so I never know how to answer that question. — Brene Brown

Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism. — Thomas Sowell

Never confuse being righteous vs. being arrogant. An arrogant person will see a person lashing out because they were hurt by them and they will not try to mend the situation or even understand their point of view. They take the superior viewpoint that others are not worthy of their time because they believe they are right and those angry with them are wrong. A righteous person doesn't care who is right or wrong. God asked them to love everyone. They make their life about leaving people in peace, not pain. — Shannon L. Alder

As we grow older, we should learn that these are two quite different things. Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. Some people have easy temperaments and weak characters; others have difficult temperaments and strong characters. We are all prone to confuse the two in assessing people we associate with. Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable. — Sydney J. Harris

People confuse vulgar and naked with sexiness. You want the mystery! — Carolina Herrera

People who confuse social behavior with manners naturally think of it as something that can be donned and doffed, a fashion that can be copied. But social behavior is nerve and bone, not clothes, and is never just a copy, however derivative it may look. — Nick Joaquin

A lot of people confuse free climbing with free solo. Free climbing is when we use ropes, but we only make upward progress with our bodies. — Dean Potter

When people run a business and open their door to the public, they must serve the public. That doesn't mean they can't say whatever they want to say. It doesn't mean they can't believe whatever they want to believe. Those are protected also. But businesses must serve the public. And that's a principle that we fought for in this country over many, many decades, when some were invoking religious freedom as an excuse to deny people on the basis of their race, on the basis of their religion, on the basis of sex and on the basis now of sexual orientation. Let's not confuse one thing with the other. — Chris Christie

Christianity doesn't come into it. George Bush and Tony Blair are not Christians. Religious people believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in the profits and how to get a piece of them. So don't ever confuse this with a war of civilizations. — George Galloway

Frenzy, the counterfeit of fervency, is a contrived attempt to simulate godly fervor. Those who deliberately manipulate
people's emotions are served warning here. There is something holy, something sovereign, about genuine spiritual fervor that cannot be manufactured artificially. It is easy to confuse frenzy and fervor, but the confusion is deadly. — R.C. Sproul

People confuse being world No. 1 with winning a Major championship. — Lee Westwood

Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events. — Richard Rohr

I think movies in general should have more respect for the audience than they do. Too many films are afraid to confuse people, so all the information is given to them right away, and there's nothing left for the film to do. It ruins many stories, because everything becomes obvious and predictable. I want my films to engage people more and make them more actively involved in the story. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

People confuse compassion with government being compassionate with other people's money versus people being compassionate with their own money. — Michele Bachmann

The problem with much of the debate over this issue is that we confuse two separate matters: immigration policy (how many people we admit) and immigrant policy (how we treat people who are already here). What our nation needs is a pro-immigrant policy of low immigration. A pro-immigrant policy of low immigration can reconcile America's traditional welcome for newcomers with the troubling consequences of today's mass immigration. It would enable us to be faithful and wise stewards of America's interests while also showing immigrants the respect they deserve as future Americans. — Tom Tancredo

I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa — Lauren Oliver

Some people confuse intensity for passion and challenge for attraction. — Donna Lynn Hope

Marilyn Manson has always been intended to confuse some, anger some and make some people feel at home. There's no way to misunderstand what I do - but everyone can understand it differently. That's the only way I've learned to embrace art - it has to be a question mark, not an answer. — Marilyn Manson

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami - a man who has achieved self-mastery - convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise.
"I told you not to bite," said the swami, "but I did not tell you not to hiss."
"Many people, like the swami's cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite," writes Tavris. — Susan Cain

The John Birch Society is Communism's greatest ally. With its help we will divide and confuse the American people until they have lost faith in their Government, their nation has ceased to be a major world power, and their country is ripe for revolution. — Nikita Khrushchev

Sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people - and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.
Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they're a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role.
Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. Its a matter of presenting yourself as safe. — Keith Johnstone

People always confuse intelligence with rational thinking and skepticism. I think it's a big mistake to assume anyone that follows a cult, religion, political party we don't like, etc is "stupid." But it's fair to say that if you follow something irrational, you are acting irrationally (at least as it pertains to that one specific act.) People can be smart - even brilliant - without necessarily being rational. Sometimes it's easy for people to be skeptical to most things, but with one or two glaring blind spots. If you don't spend a good portion of time playing devil's advocate with your own dearly held beliefs, odds are that there will be at least a couple of them that are irrational, even if you're one of the smartest people around. — Jon Moore

You mustn't confuse the need for effective chairmanship, which is part of the job of the boss, along with the ability to take tough decisions and to lead people. — Charles Kennedy

Many people confuse authority and the power of efficiency, as if the first role of people with responsibility is to take decisions, command effectively and so exercise power. But their role first of all is to be a person to whom others can turn for help and advice, to provide security, to affirm, to support, to encourage and to guide. — Jean Vanier

Technology sometimes encourages people to confuse busyness with effectiveness. — Douglas B. Reeves

Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfil obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. -Robert A. Heinlein — Christopher G. Nuttall

I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out. — Criss Jami

There is this absurd assumption that the revitalisation of the public sphere is always a good thing. I think people tend to confuse 'civic' and 'civil,' and they believe that everything that is done by citizens is necessarily a good thing because you build a network, an association. — Evgeny Morozov

Some people give gifts in order to bewilder, confuse, and manipulate their recipients. — Mallory Ortberg

I love Obama's calm and dignity. A lot of people confuse that with being aloof, but I know people that have held that job. It's a 24-hour barrage of information. — Stephen Stills

I do believe that half a dozen commonplace attorneys could so mystify and misconstrue the Ten Commandments, and so confuse Moses' surroundings on Mount Sinai, that the great law-giver, if he returned to this planet, would doubt his own identity, abjure every one of his deliverances, yea, even commend the very sins he so clearly forbade his people. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

People always say to be careful not to confuse sex and love, but I think they should be more wary of confusing love and understanding. — M.E. Thomas

All designed tools and objects are sort of extensions of human abilities, and they do tend to make life richer for us. But, an awful lot of designs, especially in this country, make life a lot more inconvenient. I'm thinking, for instance, of high-fidelity units that have so many switches and toggles and buttons and things that they confuse most people. — Victor Papanek

I do not believe the American people are going to confuse hatred for passion. — Ed Gillespie

No one can estimate the power of authority among poor and uneducated people in a world whose problems confuse even the wisest. — Joyce Cary

I immediately split the crowd. I thought about coming on every night and shouting, Gay pride, white power! just to confuse people. — Doug Stanhope

The unthinking glorification of digital activism makes its practitioners confuse priorities with capabilities. Getting people onto the streets, which may indeed become easier with modern communication tools, is usually the last stage of a protest movement, in both democracies and autocracies. One cannot start with protests and think of political demands and further steps later on. There are real dangers to substituting startegic and long-term action with spontaneous street marches. — Evgeny Morozov

The horse needs to respect you, but sometimes people confuse respect & fear. And they're not the same at all. — Buck Brannaman

Half the people think I write Obama's speeches; the other half think I'm on 'Entourage.' So I'm at the level of fame where people kind of know who I am, but they confuse me with other people. — Jon Favreau

Don't drive drunk. Ever. Don't shag anyone you don't like, or who doesn't like you. Get a look at how people live in a place where you don't. Suffering is over-rated, don't pursue it. Ask for help when you need it, don't when you don't, and learn to recognize the difference. Don't confuse movement and progress. Be kind. Be forgiving. Pay attention. — Christopher Moore

If we aren't careful, our children will come down with 'affluenza,' a disease that causes them to confuse wants and needs. We need to teach our children what my grandmother taught me: Think twice about spending money you don't have on things you don't need to impress people you don't like anyway. — Michelle Singletary

If you can't show the difference between religion and the Gospel, people will confuse morality with a changed heart — Timothy Keller

Our modern day, hyper-rat-race culture often leads us to mistakenly confuse
'busy' for 'success'. The truth of the matter is that if you're constantly having to tell people how busy you are and how overwhelmed with work or stressed you are, what you're really telling them is that you can't cope with what's on your plate. You're 'failing'. — Oli Anderson

Surprisingly few outsiders know about the Cuckmere Valley, and it is not uncommon for people to confuse Alfriston with Alfreton in the Derbyshire Peak District. — David Hewson

Infosys was going to be a different type of company. It was going to be very ethically run, meritocratic, quality-conscious, transparent. People didn't confuse the personal with the corporate. — Nandan Nilekani

I'm always astonished when readers suggest that I must write my novels while high on pot or (God forbid!) LSD. Apparently, there are people who confuse the powers of imagination with the effects of intoxication. Not one word of my oeuvre, not one, has been written while in an artificially altered state. Unlike many authors, I don't even drink coffee when I write. No coffee, no cola, no cigarettes. There was a time when I smoked big Havana cigars while writing, not for the nicotine (I didn't inhale) but as an anchor, something to hold on to, I told myself, to keep from falling over the edge of the earth. Eventually, I began to wonder what it would be like to take that fall. So one day I threw out the cigars and just let go. Falling, I must say, has been exhilarating
though I may change my mind when I hit bottom. — Tom Robbins