Quotes & Sayings About Muddle

Wars are never fought for one reason," he said. "They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle. — T.H. White

The ability to see and examine himself; the ability to make moral decisions and act on them; the mental and physical courage of his suicide. "He took his own life" is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands - and then out of them. How few of us - we that remain - can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. — Julian Barnes

From now on there is no longer any development immanent to art. The times have passed for history of art with a logical sense. There is no longer even any consistency in absurdities; the development has been wound up, and what comes now already exists: the syncretism of a muddle of all styles and possibilities, post-history. — Arnold Gehlen

In fact I'm in too much of a mental muddle to know where I am - an idealist or not. I'm a mere man of letters, and I do what I can with those subjects. — Jorge Luis Borges

How can I be certain I'm not manufacturing a memory to match the evidence? You can't rely on memory. You can't rely on ancient artifacts, either, to tell you a story you can live with. You can rely only on the sculpture of your life you carve out of the available material, the one that stands by while you muddle your way into your future. Patrick — Jan Ellison

Everything is always a muddle just before it settles in. Tell — Alan Bradley

This motion-picture muddle had distracted me from my writing. — Zane Grey

I am 33 years old, and what can I have been doing that I still am in a muddle? But everyone else is, too; maybe our muddles are concurrent. — Louis MacNeice

The British are proud of their ability to create a muddle and then muddle through all difficulties. I must shake the British pride: muddle is not an exclusively British institution. Read descriptions, for instance, of the over-organized, wonderfully systematic and "thorough" German war machine during the last war. — George Mikes

Muddle is the extra unknown personality in any committee. — Anthony Sampson

Today finds Scotland in an extraordinary muddle. First she was free in body, romantic, cultured, and uncivilised, till her government was taken over by a usurious Kirk, weilding power through superstition. The boor for a century, she was repopularised by Scott, adopted as a plaything by a foreign queen, suffered worse than any nation in the industrial upheaval, and finally left an abortive carcase rotting somewhere to the North of England. — George Scott-Moncrieff

But the failure of Christianity is a modern myth, and we shouldn't be ashamed of telling the proper story of church history, which of course has plenty of muddle and wickedness, but also far more than we normally imagine of love and creativity and beauty and justice and healing and education and hope. To — N. T. Wright

You can't save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don't appreciate your interfering with the drama they've created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don't want to change. — Sue Grafton

As I writer, I only have moments of clarity when my whole purpose is plain and laid out before me. The rest of the time I muddle about blind groping for clear purpose again. — Rich Feitelberg

I knew she was leaving. I knew we were never going to date long-distance. I knew that we wouldn't have been able to be like this back when were were dating, so there was no use in regretting what hadn't happened. I suspected that what happens in hotel rooms rarely lasts outside of them. I suspected that when something was a beginning and an ending at the same time, that meant it could only exist in the present ...
..It was snowing outside, anointing the air with a quiet wonder shared by all passersby. When I got back to my mother's apartment, I was a mixture of giddy thrill-happiness and muddle gut-confusion
I didn't want to leave anything regarding Sofia to chance, and at the same time I was enjoying this step away from it. — David Levithan

Yet in all those cases I finally steeled myself to seize the opportunity, and find a way to muddle through and eventually conclude that I had, in fact, chosen the right path, as risky as it seemed at the time. — Vint Cerf

The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society. — J.G. Ballard

Love is fragile. And we're not always its best caretakers. We just muddle through and do the best we can. And hope this fragile thing survives against all odds. — Nicholas Sparks

As you go through life, the might current of society is bound to get in your way and there will certainly be times that things don't go as you'd hoped. When this happens, don't look to society for a cause. Do not renounce society. Frankly, you'd be wasting your time. Instead just say, "That's life!" and muddle your way through with frustration. Once you're past it, consider: If society's swift current is tossing you around, how should you be swimming there in it's midst. You should have learned how, here in the E class, in this assassination classroom. You don't always have to stand and face it head-on. You can run and you can hide. If it's not against the rules, you can try a sneak attack. You can use unconventional weapons. Stay determined - not impatient nor discouraged - and with repeated trial and error, you're bound to reach a splendid outcome eventually. — Yusei Matsui

The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis. — Bertrand Russell

There are some good things and some fantastic ones in Auden's early attitude; if the reader calls it a muddle I shall acquiesce, with the remark that the later position might be considered a more rarefied muddle. But poets rather specialize in muddles and I have no doubt which of the muddles was better for Auden's poetry: one was fertile and usable, the other decidedly is not. Auden sometimes seems to be saying with Henry Clay, "I had rather be right than poetry"; but I am not sure, then, that he is either. — Randall Jarrell

Adapt the atmosphere of your reply to suit that of the letter you have received. If its tone is troubled, be sympathetic. If it is rude, be especially courteous. If it is muddle-headed, be especially lucid. If it is stubborn, be patient. If your correspondent is helpful, be appreciative. If you find yourself convicted of a mistake, acknowledge it freely and even with gratitude. — Rebecca Gowers

The Central Indian Trifakirs, though something of a pest, were quite harmless. They always appeared in threes, of course, and made a practice of handing out muddle-headed philosophical tracts. — Walter Moers

There will be hundreds of sons making the same journey,' he says. 'All of us riding with broken hearts, all of us thinking of vengeance. This is what I feared would come; this is what I have dreaded. It is not very bright and honorable as you have always thought it; it is not like a ballad. It is a muddle and a mess, and a sinful waste, and good men have died and more will follow. — Philippa Gregory

He never looks you straight in the eye; or if he does, it is somehow vaguely, indefinitely; he does not pierce you with the hawk's eye or the falcon's gaze of a cavalry officer. The reason for that is that he sees, at one and the same time, both your features and those of some plaster Hercules standing in his room, or else he imagines a painting of his own that he still means to produce. That is why his responses are often incoherent, not to the point, and the muddle of things in his head increases his timidity all the more. — Nikolai Gogol

Don't let a few silly truths muddle up a good story. — A.C. Gaughen

Alarm, when used for anything less than a fire or an air attack, is certain to muddle the mind, unsettle the senses, and, in most cases, more than double the danger. — Ken Kesey

After a minute, she asked again, "So what did you want to do?"

"I'd like to have sex, if it's not too much trouble."

She burst into laughter and rolled over on top of him, loving the feel of his big, warm, strong body beneath her. "I guess I can muddle through such a thing, but it will be a real sacrifice on my part. — Noelle Adams

It is this compulsion to look backwards at a time of crisis because one's got no idea of what lies ahead. There is a notion of security that somehow it must resemble the past. It's never going to. Just because we muddled through in the past doesn't mean we can automatically muddle through in the future. — Antony Beevor

And you probably also know that when you look out of an aeroplane window and see the world shrink like that, you can't help but think about the whole of your life, from the beginning until where you are now, and everyone you've ever known. And you'll know that thinking about those things makes you feel grateful to God for providing them, and angry with Him for not helping you to understand them better, and so you end up in a terrible muddle and needing to talk to a priest. I decided I wouldn't sit in the window seat on the way back. I don't know how these jet-set people who have to fly once or twice a year cope, I really don't. — Nick Hornby

Can I be a modern girl, if I acknowledge such thoughts? I must be modern; I live now. But like everybody else, as Hollier says, I live in a muddle of eras, and some of my ideas belong to today, and some to an ancient past, and some to periods of time that seem more relevant to my parents than to me. If I could sort them and control them I might know better where I stand, but when I most want to be contemporary the Past keeps pushing in, and when I long for the Past (like when I wish Tadeusz had not died, and were with me now to guide and explain and help me to find where I belong in life) the Present cannot be pushed away. When I hear girls I know longing to be what they call liberated, and when I hear others rejoicing in what they think of as liberation, I feel a fool, because I simply do not know where I stand. — Robertson Davies

We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase. — Julian Barnes

Any process can be improved. Defects that are invisible to the knowledgeable may be obvious to newcomers. The simplest solutions are the best. Repeating all these anecdotes isn't rote monotony - it's calculated strategy. "The rest of us try to muddle around with complicated contradictory goals and it makes it harder for people to help us," says his friend Danny Hillis. "Jeff is very clear and simple about his goals, and the way he articulates them makes it easy for others, because it's consistent. — Brad Stone

I learned that the story has no beginning, and no story has an end. That the story is all muddle, all middle. That the story is never true, but that the lie is indeed a child of silence. By — Ursula K. Le Guin

Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying "Arise, sir Knight" deserves a life sentence in Camelot. — Wilfrid Sheed

I'm more lost when I'm not on tour. I'm in a bit of a muddle at nine o'clock - 'Where's the stage?' On tour, there are people directing and supervising you. — Ronnie Wood

People will then often say, 'But surely it's better to remain an Agnostic just in case?' This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I've been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.) — Douglas Adams

Stories are like snapshots, pictures snatched out of time, with clean hard edges. But this was life, and life always begins and ends in a bloody muddle, womb to tomb, just one big mess, a can of worms left to rot in the sun. — James Crumley

For all their simplicity, humans could be remarkably perceptive, though they didn't know it most of the time, and their ability to thrust straight through deception and see to the heart of truth was often lost with childhood. By adulthood humans had trained themselves to be coy and manipulative in response to the coy and manipulative society in which they lived, which led them to believe that everyone was trying to be as coy and manipulative as themselves and were uncertain about what was true and what was not. Beyond their few flashes of clarity, everything became a muddle of colliding doubts. — Sean DeLauder

Maybe it's an addiction, she says, but she looks around her at meetings and she can't help thinking that meetings are good for people. They make people feel everything isn't such a muddle. — Alice Munro

Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to choose our own and our descendants' destiny. Failing to choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catastrophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right choices could lead to a much better world. — John Holdren

It's all a muddle in my head, graves and nuptials and the different varieties of motion. — Samuel Beckett

It is not necessarily ominous that the formal family dinner is declining in many households or becoming limited to special occasions. We might be better off if we could separate food as nourishment and pleasure from food as the currency of care that leaves so many woman laboring long hours to prove affection in that semantic muddle called nurturance. — Mary Catherine Bateson

It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal. — E. M. Forster

We should live, my Lesbia, and love
And value all the talk of stricter
Old men at a single penny.
Suns can set and rise again;
For us, once our brief light has set,
There's one unending night for sleeping.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then still another thousand, then a hundred;
Then, when we've made many thousands,
We'll muddle them so as not to know
Or lest some villain overlook us
Knowing the total of our kisses.
(Translated by Guy Lee) — Catullus

Then realized she wasn't there. Or - she was there and she wasn't. Part of her was there, but it was invisible. The invisible part was the important part. This was something I had never understood before. But when I tried to say this out loud the words came out in a muddle and I realized with a cold slap that I was wrong. Both parts had to be together. You couldn't have one part without the other. — Donna Tartt

My chosen instrument is guitar and, fortunately, I'm able to muddle through that. I can play guitar to the point where I can express myself artistically. — Joe Perry

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own. — Charles De Lint

We're naturally programmed to endure a muddle of emotions as we leave childhood behind. — Mariella Frostrup

I believe that the military-industrial state will eventually collapse, possibly even in our lifetime, and that a majority of us (if prepared) will muddle through to a freer, more open, less crowded, green and spacious agrarian society. (Maybe; of course it may be only a repeat of the middle ages.) — Edward Abbey

buying into The ONE Thing becomes difficult because we've unfortunately bought into too many others - and more often than not those "other things" muddle our thinking, misguide our actions, and sidetrack our success. — Gary Keller

And here I sit with my stamps in a complete muddle, and nobody has bothered to tell me what it's all about."
"Listen now, Hemul," said Snufkin slowly and clearly. "It's about a comet that is going to collide with the earth tomorrow."
"Collide?" said the Hemulen. "Has that anything to do with stamp-collecting? — Tove Jansson

It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life. There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came. He had seen sights more gruesome and more beautiful by far, and been left with no more than a fleeting muddle of their memory. But these
the still moments, as he called them to himself
they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible. — Diana Gabaldon

Increasingly, Sawtooth's own memories are a loud bright muddle, like opening the door on a party full of strangers. He lies awake at night, limping down the long corridors of his memory, trying to find the girl's hands, ... — Karen Russell

Never explain what you do. It speaks for itself. You only muddle it by talking about it. — Shel Silverstein

You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. — E. M. Forster

When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles ...
... they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle. — Dr. Seuss

I think you are falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant. — Arthur Machen

Though blessed with the enviable properties of a mink coat - graceful, unreasonable, and impractical no matter what she was draped over - she was nevertheless one of those people whose personality proved to be the bane of modern mathematicians. She was neither a flat nor solid shape. She showed no symmetry at all. Trigonometry, Calculus and Statistics all proved useless. Her Pie Chart was a muddle of arbitrary wedges, her Line Graph, the silhouette of the Alps. And just when one listed her under Chaos Theory - Butterfly Effects, Weather Predictions, Fractals, Bifurcation diagrams and whatnot - she showed up as an equilateral triangle, sometimes even a square. — Marisha Pessl

Everything that highly educated men can do to obscure a simple truth, to make a woman doubt her feelings, to make her own thoughts a muddle, they do to her. They use their learning as a hurdle to herd her one way and then the other and then finally trap her in contradictions of which she can make no sense. — Philippa Gregory

Morality can muddle mystical understanding and virtue is only necessary in so far as it favours success. All wisdom must be encompassed in order to achieve enlightenment. — Aleister Crowley

William pouts irritably. Socialism is not the same thing as letting one's servants muddle towards anarchy. But never mind, never mind: on a day like today, it's not worth worrying over. Soon the servant question, at least in William Rackham's household, will be resolved beyond any ambiguity. — Michel Faber

Any fool can waste, any fool can muddle, but it takes something of a man to save, and the more he saves the more of a man does it make of him. — Rudyard Kipling

Fyodor Pavlovich, for example, began with practically nothing, was a landowner of the very least important category, went trotting around other people's dinner tables, aspired to the rank of sponge, but at the moment of his decease turned out to possess something to the tune of one hundred thousand roubles in ready money. And yet at the same time he had persisted all his life in being one of the most muddle-headed madcaps in the whole of our district. I repeat: here there was no question of stupidity; the bulk of these madcaps are really quite sharp and clever - but plain muddle-headedness, and, moreover, of a peculiar, national variety. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle. — E. M. Forster

I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. 'The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life' That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains. — Agatha Christie

We're all just people...We all have things we deal with, but it's all right. We always muddle through. — Lauren Myracle

My dear if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better understand your affairs. — Charles Dickens

Don't you think," said Father Rothschild gently, "that perhaps it is all in some way historical? I don't think people ever want to lose their faith either in religion or anything else. I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence. I think all these divorces show that. People aren't content just to muddle along nowadays ... And this word "bogus" they all use ... They won't make the best of a bad job nowadays. My private schoolmaster used to say, "If a thing's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well." My Church has taught that in different words for several centuries. But these young people have got hold of another end of the stick, and for all we know it may be the right one. They say, "If a thing's not worth doing well, it's not worth doing at all." It makes everything very difficult for them. — Evelyn Waugh

Love is like this, Faye thinks now. We love people because they love us. It's narcissistic. It's best to be perfectly clear about this and not let abstractions like fate and destiny muddle the issue. Peggy, after all, could have picked any boy in the school. — Nathan Hill

Patriotism was used to muddle the sense of morality: "Our beloved country is being attacked and we must be loyal to it; in times of crisis it is not right to criticize your leaders. It is disloyal, an act of treachery." Using jingoist language is far easier than taking responsibility for righteousness in the nation. Far easier to shout patriotic slogans than to work patriotically for justice. — Eugene H. Peterson

Sometimes, in interviews, I am asked whether The Endless are a dysfunctional family. I do not believe i have ever observed a "functional" family, families are comprised, in equal measure, of unquestioning and undeserved love and of unquestioning and cruelly undeserved irritation: we muddle along s best we can. And that's the best that can be said for us. — Neil Gaiman

I do not want to muddle about with Politicks, and whenever two Folk of any sort are in a room together there are always Politicks to be muddled in. — Catherynne M Valente

I think we're still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate. — Jane Goodall

If men understood domestic economy half as well as women do, then their political economy and their entire consequent statecraft would not be the futil muddle which it is. — James Stephens

But to declare his wishes only in some unknown corner of Asia, to choose the most double-dealing and the most superstitious of peoples as followers, and the vilest, most ridiculous, and most roguish working man as representative, to muddle up the message so much that it is impossible to comprehend, to teach it only to a tiny number of individuals while leaving everyone else in the dark, and to punish them for remaining there ... Oh, no, Therese, no, no, such atrocities cannot be our guide. I would rather die a thousand times than believe in them. When atheism wants martyrs, let it choose them and my blood is ready. — Marquis De Sade

Executives are paralyzed by the muddle. Few employees deep down in the company even know what the strategy is. And a closer look reveals that most plans don't contain a strategy at all but rather a smorgasbord of tactics that individually make sense but collectively don't add up to a unified, clear direction that sets a company apart - let alone makes the competition irrelevant. Does this sound like the strategic plans in your company? — W.Chan Kim

It seems all humans ever do is muddle through and hope to have a rest period before the next obstacle comes along. It's the love that keeps us going, whether it's a partner, or your family, or your friends who are also your family. If we didn't have that love, anything else keeping you running will eventually burn out. — Sean Kennedy

Muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said: "I think you mentioned last night a name I know - that of Mr. Porterfield." "Oh no I didn't! — Henry James

I never overtly analyse my own movies, I don't think that's my job to do that. I just muddle through and do what I think is best for the movie. — Peter Jackson

When confronting most crises, whether historic or contemporary, aid agencies generally muddle along on a case-by-case basis. They weigh insufficient information, extrapolate somewhat blindly about long-term pros and cons, and reluctantly arrive at decisions meant to do the most good and the least harm. — Samantha Power

You baffle me, addle me, drive me insane.
You muddle, befuddle, and rattle my brain.
My senses are mad,
Skewed judgment to blame.
You drive me half stark-raving bonkers!
(But the truly crazy thing is how I love it.) — Richelle E. Goodrich

Some people find clarity threatening. They like muddle, confusion, obscurity. So when somebody does no more than speak clearly it sounds threatening. — Richard Dawkins

A Poster Is a Poster and Not a Pipe
A poster has a message. Sometimes. A poster is a sheet of paper without a backside. A poster is a stamp. You can put it on the wall or on the window, on the celing or on the ground, upside down or wrong side up. There are young posters that look very old and old posters that never die. A good poster attacks you. A bad poster loves you. And there are "l'art-pour-l'art" posters that love themselves and want to be beautiful. These type of posters confuse the viewer, muddle up his eyes, and force him to look for something in the poster that is not inside. If you like, you can smoke it in your pipe. — Uwe Loesch

Each way of organizing has strengths and weaknesses. Taxonomy affords a view from the top, facets help us muddle through the middle, and tags build bridges at the bottom. — Peter Morville

If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle. — Alberto Manguel

Of course I can read", he said. "Jesus Christ."
"Well, then, what are you trying to tell me? That you don't want to?"
"No. I-" He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose.
"-I don't know why I'm trying to tell you anything. I can read. I just can't read book."
"So pretend it's a really long street sign and muddle through it. — Rainbow Rowell

Either Christ must live and the Law perish, or the Law remains and Christ must perish; Christ and the Law cannot dwell side by side in the conscience. It is either grace or law. To muddle the two is to eliminate the Gospel of Christ entirely. — Martin Luther

We live our lives by philosophies, amid worldly affairs and occupations that totally absorb us and are a great distance from the manger. In all kinds of ways, God has to prod us and reach out to us again and again, so that we can manage to escape from the muddle of our thoughts and activities and discover the way that leads to him. But a path exists for all of us. The Lord provides everyone with tailor-made signals. — Pope Benedict XVI

I'm at my best in a messy, middle-of-the-road muddle. — Harold Wilson

I'm in a muddle about a lot of things
i've just discovered that i've a mind, and i'm starting to read"
"read what?"
"everything. i have to pick and choose, of course, but mostly things that make me think. — F Scott Fitzgerald

He was a sociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to get out. — Iris Murdoch

A year later, there is another miscarriage, another lost boy, and then an operation, and Rachel is in a muddle. Another missed carriage, she hears, conjuring a vision of Mama in a typical dash from the house, hurrying for trains to other cities where she will conduct music and choirs. Rachel sees Katya on a railway platform, suitcase and baton box in hand, but Mama is too late, the train hurtles by, screaming through the arches, a great train of missed carriages. Rachel's night-time wish is granted then, that though Katya has left her once again, she must return home as quickly. She has missed her carriage.

'Mama,' Rachel whispers into the night bedroom air, 'Mama, hurry home! — Emma Richler

I think the novel is essentially a comic form (tragedy is for the theatre), not meaning by that full of jokes, but that it is about the absurd detail of human life, the way in which one cannot fully understand what is happening. Life is muddle and jumble and ends inconclusively, and when this is presented with great comic art the sorrows of human life can be truthfully conveyed; one is moved by the spectacle, and feels that something truthful has been told in a magic way. — Iris Murdoch

If the United States leads a multinational force into Iraq without United Nations backing, Canada should fight beside its neighbour. We've gone from being a middle power to a muddle power on this one. — Peter MacKay

The right-of-centre parties still often compete with left-of-centre ones to proclaim their attachment to all the main programmes of spending, particularly spending on social services of one kind or another. But this foolish as well as muddled. It is foolish because left-of-centre parties will always be able to outbid right-of-centre ones in this auction - after all, that is why they are on the left in the first place. The muddle arises because once we concede that public spending and taxation are than a necessary evil we have lost sight of the core values of freedom. — Margaret Thatcher

I have never described the time I was in Doctor Who as anything except a kind of ecstatic success, but all the rest has been rather a muddle and a disappointment. Compared to Doctor Who, it has been an outrageous failure really - it's so boring. — Tom Baker

The result of feeling that we are separate minds in an alien,
and mostly stupid, universe is that we have no common sense, no way of making sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common. It's just my opinion against yours, and therefore the most aggressive and violent (and thus insensitive) propagandist makes the decisions. A muddle of conflicting opinions united by force of propaganda — Alan W. Watts

There are going to be moments of deep, deep doubts, and you have to have faith that your initial idea was good and just muddle through. — Ann Brashares

If you ask me, what is helpful to creativity is training the eye to notice things, to observe closely and precisely, being careful not to make a muddle of it. — Ian Graham