You are not confused. You are experiencing a confusing situation. Separate the confusing situation from who you are. If you say “I am confused,” you are implying the confusing situation is part of you. It is not. It is part of what you are experiencing. The answer to the confusion does not lie in the confusion itself. Rather it lies in the ability to step outside of it and see that you are experiencing it instead of it being you. The answer lies in you.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

We ought to recognize that uncertainty of mind is not all a bad thing. It is a sign that your mind is still alive, still sensitive. If you are not at all confused in this day you are dead mentally and spiritually. There is of course the peace of the cemetery. If you want that you can have it. But you will pay for such complacent serenity with blind eyes which do not see the world's fear and agony; with deaf ears, into which the still sad music of humanity never comes; with deadened nerves and unsensitized conscience. We will never be brought to confusion, even in such a baffling and muddled world as ours, if we have a faith in a God of love as the ultimate power in the universe. The words "God is love" have this deep meaning: that everything that is against love is ultimately doomed and damned.

My biggest moments of confusion led me to the best decisions of my life in terms of doing what honors building a home within myself. Being unable to decipher people’s behavior — one day welcoming me into their lives and the next day making me feel like a stranger — led me to feel confused. Because, let’s be honest, confusing behavior in others makes you question yourself. You question your own sanity, your own recollection of events…your own understanding of the events…of the person…of yourself…

When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It's a very difficult and unhappy business. And so most of the time you're rather unhappy, actually, with this confusion. You can't penetrate this thing. Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it, the idea? And I get this feeling all the time that I'm an ape trying to put two sticks together, so I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.

Confusion is the beginning of wisdom.

Why should you be confused just because you come from a confused civilization?

Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next.

Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system. Indeed, confusing people a little bit is beneficial — it is good for you and good for them. For an application of the point in daily life, imagine someone extremely punctual and predictable who comes home at exactly six o’clock every day for fifteen years. You can use his arrival to set your watch. The fellow will cause his family anxiety if he is barely a few minutes late. Someone with a slightly more volatile — hence unpredictable — schedule, with, say, a half-hour variation, won’t do so.

people often confuse complex ideas that cannot be simplified into a media-friendly statement as symptomatic of a confused mind.

Consistent or inconsistent, no one is exempt from the mystery of the self. Probably we are all inconsistent. The world is just too complicated for a person to be able to afford the luxury of reconciling all of his beliefs with each other. Tension and confusion are important in a world where many decisions must be made quickly. Miguel de Unamuno once said, 'If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.' I would say that we all are in the same boast as the Zen master who, after contradicting himself several times in a row, said to the confused Doko, 'I cannot understand myself.'.

So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world.

When in doubt: THINK!

So many people don't stop to think when they are confused or troubled. They live in a constant state of reaction to circumstances.

Mixed feelings were confusing feelings, and I didn’t feel confused except as to why it was so hard for everyone to understand that I existed. Living this way felt like discovering your shoe was nailed to the floor, but only one of them, so that you paced, always, a circle of possibility, defined by the limited imaginations of others.