A Quote by Harlow Shapley

Chaos is but unperceived order; it is a word indicating the limitations of the human mind and the paucity of observational facts. The words ‘chaos,’ ‘accidental,’ ‘chance,’ ‘unpredictable,’ are conveniences behind which we hide our ignorance.

Harlow Shapley

Quote Topics

Accidental Behind Chance Chaos Facts Hide Human Human Mind Ignorance Limitations Mind Order Our Unpredictable Which Word Words

Quote Author

Harlow Shapley
American - Astronomer
November 2, 1885 - October 20, 1972

The human mind and the entire life process is chaotic. Chaos is not something that lacks order; chaos has varieties of order within it.

Frederick Lenz

From 2002 to the end of his presidency, George W. Bush routinely was accused by the Left of 'creating chaos:' chaos in Iraq, chaos in Afghanistan, chaos in the Muslim world, chaos among our allies.

Monica Crowley

The moment you come to trust chaos, you see God clearly. Chaos is divine order, versus human order. Change is divine order, versus human order. When the chaos becomes safety to you, then you know you're seeing God clearly.

Caroline Myss

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 Hofstadter

Chaos theory simply suggests that what appears to most people as chaos is not really chaotic, but a series of different types of orders with which the human mind has not yet become familiar.

Frederick Lenz

When we try to imagine a chaos we fail. ... In its very fiber the mind is an order and refuses to build a chaos.

George Iles

Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair.

Heath Ledger

Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.

Russell Kirk

Our task is not to bring order out of chaos, but to get work done in the midst of chaos.

George Peabody

Take chaotic mathematics, for instance. The universe is chaos. But chaos is whimping out. There is no chaos. There are just different levels of order in the universe.

Frederick Lenz

Chaos does not mean total disorder. Chaos means a multiplicity of possibilities. Chaos is from the ancient Greek words that means a thing that is birthed from the void. And it was about that which is possible, not about disorder.

Jok Church

Gardeners may create order briefly out of chaos, but nature always gets the last word, and what it says is usually untidy by human standards. But I find all states of nature beautiful, and because I want to delight in my garden, not rule it, I just accept my yen to tame the chaos on one day and let the Japanese beetles run riot on the next.

Diane Ackerman

You're free. And freedom is beautiful. And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order - order out of chaos. But we will.

George W. Bush

I’m interested in what people do with the chaos in their lives and how they respond to it, and simultaneously what they do with what they feel like are limitations. If they push against these limitations, will they wind up in the realm of chaos, or will they push against limitations and wind up in the world of freedom?