Thomas Pynchon Quotes

I looked around. As flock leader, everyone was expecting me to make a decision. Jeb's presence here would bring uncertainty, chaos, probably danger. It would perk up my day.

Without real nonviolence, there would be perfect anarchy.

You know, I think when you coach or you manage, you make decisions, and there's some that are really, really tough.

With 'Kidnapped,' there didn't seem to be a sure hand guiding it: everything had to be run-up-the-pole, so to speak, and there seemed to be a large committee, every day fighting about what the show was about.

If I disliked managing, I liked umpiring even less.

What you've got to realise is that footballers, and me in particular, have seen everything in the changing room. Everything. I've seen the manager kicking off with the players, the players kicking off with him, players fighting each other, managers fighting, everything.

Anytime you get nine people together, whether it's at a party or it's in the conference room of the Supreme Court, you do have to maintain some order, or it does kind of degenerate into squabbling pretty quickly.

What would happen if we withdrew? Anarchy and confusion.

Societies organized for the interplay of individual self-interest can collapse into manic tribalism, if not nihilistic violence.

When I was reporting crime... I never had the sense of clockwork conspiracies or some kind of imposing order of evil. What I sensed was things just sort of falling apart.

You have to build a team, but someone's got to lead, and someone's got to be unpopular at times.

Chaos is what we have. That is what I believe.

It's not the ideal situation to have two directors. It's just not the ideal thing.

There's a thin line between collectivity and chaos.

Aggression is the first step on the slippery slope to selfishness and chaos.

All the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that's why you so often want to kill each other.

When war is raging the laws are dumb.

Houllier couldn’t deal with players expressing any anger or questioning any of his decisions

Well, years and years ago, I started to ask myself three very simple questions, which dominated my life for many years. One of them was, "Why are organizations everywhere, whether commercial, social, or religious, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?" The second question was, "Why are individuals throughout the world increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they're a part?" And the third was, "Why are society and the biosphere increasingly in disarray?"

Chaos umpire sits And by decision more embroils the fray by which he reigns: next him high arbiter Chance governs all.

Everybody makes bad decisions. I am sure I have made my share of them over 40 years of service. Or I have made good decisions and have been overruled. The real challenge, when you are overruled, is to remember who the boss is and don't take it personally.

Let's pretend there's a pandemic. Let's everybody run around and play your role. Main result is that there is tremendous confusion. ... Nobody knows who's in charge. Nobody knows the chain of command.

They couldn't, in the National Party, run a bath and if either the deputy leader or the leader tried to, Sir Robert would run away with the plug.

Empires, essentially, create order. In their absence, you don't end up with lots of happy, little nation-states full of people sitting around campfires singing John Lennon's "Imagine." What you end up with is civil war, anarchy.