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All New Learning Looks At First Like Chaos.
-Adrienne Rich
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All New Learning Looks

Adrienne Rich
...
All New Learning Looks At First Like Chaos.

Understanding the Quote: "all new learning looks at first like chaos...."

This quote by Adrienne Rich reflects deeply on the theme of looks. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Looks, Firsts, Chaos, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Adrienne Rich interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich is celebrated for insightful thoughts on looks and firsts. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Looks
Firsts
Chaos
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We've Learned A Lot From The Great Psychologists. Wilhelm Reich Wrote About The Relationship Between Fascism And Sexual Repression. Freud Rediscovered The Underworld Of Consciousness That European Rationalism Had Denied. But When You Have A Nation Of People In Therapy And Counselling, "support" Groups For Every Kind Of Human Condition, Where, In The Clichés Of That Milieu, People "share" And "heal," The Question, "what For?", "what Now?" Is No Longer Asked.
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There Is No 'the Truth','a Truth' - Truth Is Not One Thing, Or Even A System. It Is An Increasing Complexity. The Pattern Of The Carpet Is A Surface. When We Look Closely, Or When We Become Weavers, We Learn Of The Tiny Multiple Threads Unseen In The Overall Pattern, The Knots On The Underside Of The Carpet
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It Is The Lesbian In Us Who Is Creative, For The Dutiful Daughter Of The Fathers In Us Is Only A Hack.
Daughter
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If We Had Time And No Money, Living By Our Wits, What Story Would You Tell?
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There Must Be Those Among Whom We Can Sit Down And Weep And Still Be Counted As Warriors.
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I'd Call It Love If Love Didn't Take So Many Years But Lust Too Is A Jewel.
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Subjects
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Country
Art
Simple
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Able
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Rooms
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Survival
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Writing
Mean
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Suicide
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Passion
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Overcoming
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Mind
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Lying
Ought
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Mother
Heart
Son
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Mother
Personality
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Mirrors
World
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Desire
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Males
Heterosexuality
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Darkness
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Transcendental
Glamour
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Seeing
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Believe
Moving
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Giving
Energy
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Writing
Ifs
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Culture
Limits
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Teacher
Mirrors
Individual Strength
Any Woman's Death Diminishes Me.
Diminish
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Order
Unity
Body
Motherhood Is The Great Mesh In Which All Human Relations Are Entangled, In Which Lurk Our Most Elemental Assumptions About Love And Power.
Motherhood
Assumption
Mesh
Can Individual Psychic Wounds Really Heal In An Abusive And Fragmented Society? Audre Lorde Has A Poem Which Begins, "what Do We Want From Each Other/ After We Have Told Our Stories?" Where Do We Go To Explore Our Stake With Others In Such A Society?
Psychics
Stories
Want
The Danger Lies In Forgetting What We Had. The Flow Between Generations Becomes A Trickle, Grandchildren Tape-recording Grandparents' Memories On Special Occasions Perhaps-no Casual Storytelling Jogged By Daily Life, There Being No Shared Daily Life What With Migrations, Exiles, Diasporas, Rendings, The Search For Work. Or There Is A Shared Daily Life Riddled With Holes Of Silence.
Memories
Lying
Grandchildren
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Country
War
People
...you Look At Me Like An Emergency
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Emergencies
Look At Me
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Art
Inspiration
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Clay
Watches
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Dream
Knows
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Silence
World
Violence
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Sex
Race
Speak
It Will Take All Your Heart, It Will Take All Your Breath It Will Be Short, It Will Not Be Simple
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Simple
Breaths
Increasingly I Think Of Poetry As A Theatre Of Voices, Not As Coming From A Single "i" Or From Any One Position. I Want To Imagine Voices Different From My Own.
Thinking
Voice
Theatre
In A Society Where Some People Are Far More Educated Than Others, In Which Public Education Is Ill-funded - Here I Am Speaking Of The U.s. - While We Build More And More Prisons To Incarcerate Youth Who Ought To Be In School, There Is Already A Gap Between Those With Education And Those Without. Those With Educational Privilege Can Be Seen As Arrogant, Remote, Alien - And Very Often They Believe Themselves Superior.
Educational
Believe
School
In The States, There Has Been, Compared To The Sixties And Seventies, A Huge Retrenchment - Not Just In Poetry - Into The Personal. A Withdrawal From Thinking In Terms Of Social And Collective Values, Needs And Solutions. The Consciousness-raising Groups Of The Women's Movement, For Instance, Becoming "support-groups" Or Therapy Groups.
Thinking
Support
Needs
There Is No 'the Truth,' 'a Truth'--truth Is Not One Thing, Or Even A System. It Is An Increasing Complexity.
Truth Is
Complexity
One Thing
My Children Cause Me The Most Exquisite Suffering Of Which I Have Any Experience. It Is The Suffering Of Ambivalence: The Murderous Alternation Between Bitter Resentment And Raw-edged Nerves, And Blissful Gratification And Tenderness. Sometimes I Seem To Myself, In My Feelings Toward These Tiny Guiltless Beings, A Monster Of Selfishness And Intolerance.
Children
Feelings
Suffering
Abortion Is Violence; A Deep, Desperate Violence Inflicted By A Woman Upon, First Of All, Herself.
Abortion
Violence
Firsts
Can You Remember? When We Thought The Poets Taught How To Live?
Life
Poetry
Taught
War Is An Absolute Failure Of Imagination, Scientific And Political.
War
Imagination
Political
As A Society In Turmoil, We Are Going To See More, And More Various, Attempts To Simulate Order Through Repression; And Art Is A Historical Target For Such Efforts.
Art
Order
Effort
Not Biology, But Ignorance Of Ourselves, Has Been The Key To Our Powerlessness
Ignorance
Keys
Biology
... How Have I Used Rivers, How Have I Used Wars To Escape Writing Of The Worst Thing Of All-- Not The Crimes Of Other, Not Even Our Own Death, But The Failure To Want Our Freedom Passionately Enough So That Blighted Elms, Sick Rivers, Massacres Would Seem Mere Emblems Of That Desecration Of Ourselves?
Freedom
War
Writing
What I Discerned In The U.s. Was A Convergence Of Poetic Voices Coming From Many Different Rents In The Social Fabric, Many Cultures, Many Tributaries, Which, Together, Make Up The American Poetry Of The Late Twentieth Century.
Voice
Together
Different
These Scars Bear Witness But Whether To Repair Or To Destruction I No Longer Know.
Bears
Scar
Destruction
The Difficulty Of Saying I-a Phrase From The East German Novelist Christa Wolf. But Once Having Said It, As We Realize The Necessity To Go Further, Isn't There A Difficulty Of Saying 'we'? You Cannot Speak For Me. I Cannot Speak For You. Two Thoughts: There Is No Liberation That Only Knows How To Say 'i'; There Is No Collective Movement That Speaks For Each Of Us All The Way Through.
Two
Phrases
Movement
The Mother's Battle For Her Child With Sickness, With Poverty, With War, With All The Forces Of Exploitation And Callousness That Cheapen Human Life Needs To Become A Common Human Battle, Waged In Love And In The Passion For Survival.
Mother
Children
War
No Woman Is Really An Insider In The Institutions Fathered By Masculine Consciousness.
Consciousness
Institutions
Masculine
Lying Is Done With Words And Also With Silence.
Truth
Integrity
Liars
"global Culture" Is Of Course Not A Culture: It's The Global Marketing And Imposing Of Commodities And Images For The Interests Of The Few At The Expense Of The Many.
Marketing
Culture
Commodity
Heterosexuality Has Been Forcibly And Subliminally Imposed On Women. Yet Everywhere Women Have Resisted It, Often At The Cost Of Physical Torture, Imprisonment, Psychosurgery, Social Ostracism, And Extreme Poverty.
Heterosexuality Is
Cost
Poverty
The Suppressed Lesbian I Had Been Carrying In Me Since Adolescence Began To Stretch Her Limbs.
Sexuality
Limbs
Adolescence
I Keep Coming Back To You In My Head, But You Couldn't Know That, And I Have No Carbons.
I Miss You
Missing You
Missing Someone
A President Cannot Meaningfully Honor Certain Token Artists While The People At Large Are So Dishonored.'”
Artist
People
Honor
All New Learning Looks At First Like Chaos.
Looks
Firsts
Chaos
False History Gets Made All Day, Any Day, The Truth Of The New Is Never On The News.
New Day
Historical
News
The Decision To Feed The World Is The Real Decision. No Revolution Has Chosen It. For That Choice Requires That Women Shall Be Free.
Real
Choices
Decision
There's Been Real Hostility Toward Political Poetry In The U.s., Hostility Or, At Best, Incomprehension. I'm Speaking Of Those Who Have Institutional Power Over What Gets Published, Over Grants Andprizes And Reviewing. Most Of Them, Though Not All, Arewhite And Male. But Even As American Society Is Unravelling, Becoming More Violent And Punitive, Wonderful Political Poetshave Been Emerging.
Real
Political
Males
I Touch You Knowing We Weren't Born Tomorrow, And Somehow, Each Of Us Will Help The Other Live, And Somewhere, Each Of Us Must Help The Other Die.
Knowing
Tomorrow
Helping
I Am A Citizen Of A Country That Has Just Undergone A Thieved Election, A Country Deeply And Dangerously Divided Between Rich And Poor, But Also Between Rich And Middle Class. What I Believe In And What My Government Represents Are Not The Same Thing.
Country
Believe
Government
Despair, When Not The Response To Absolute Physical And Moral Defeat Is, Like War, The Failure Of Imagination.
War
Imagination
Confusion
The Dialectic Between Change And Continuity Is A Painful But Deeply Instructive One, In Personal Life As In The Life Of A People.to "see The Light" Too Often Has Meant Rejecting The Treasures Found In Darkness.
Change
Light
People
The Words Are Purposes./the Words Are Maps./i Came To See The Damage That Was Done/and The Treasures That Prevail.
Damage
Purpose
Done
Responsibility To Yourself Means Refusing To Let Others Do Your Thinking, Talking, And Naming For You; It Means Learning To Respect And Use Your Own Brains And Instincts; Hence, Grappling With Hard Work.
Strong Women
Hard Work
Mean
Sleeping. Turning In Turn Like Planets Rotating In Their Midnight Meadow: A Touch Is Enough To Let Us Know We're Not Alone In The Universe, Even In Sleep.
Sleep
Midnight
Enough
The Liar Often Suffers From Amnesia. Amnesia Is The Silence Of The Unconscious.
Liars
Lying
Silence
A Book Of Poems Doesn't Just Come Out By Chance, An Editor Has To Select It, A Publisher Has To Distribute It Or You Will Never See It.
Book
Editors
Chance
Sexist Grammar Burns Into The Brains Of Little Girls And Young Women A Message That The Male Is The Norm, The Standard, The Central Figure Beside Which We Are All Deviants, The Marginal, The Dependent Variables. It Lays The Foundation For Androcentric Thinking, And Leaves Men Safe In Their Solipsistic Tunnel-vision.
Girl
Men
Thinking
When My Dreams Showed Signs Of Becoming Politically Correct No Unruly Images Escaping Beyond Borders ... Then I Began To Wonder
Dream
Escaping
Political
Weather Abroad And Weather In The Heart Alike Come On Regardless Of Prediction.
Heart
Weather
Predictions
Until We Know The Assumptions In Which We Are Drenched, We Cannot Know Ourselves.
Assumption
Knows
In 1945, Just At The End Of World War Ii, The American Poet Muriel Rukeyser Wrote A Remarkable Book Called The Life Of Poetry. In It She Says That On Any Particular Day In The World, If Poetry Ceased To Exist, It Would Immediately Be Reinvented On That Same Day.
War
Book
World
If You Think You Can Grasp Me, Think Again: My Story Flows In More Than One Direction, A Delta Springing From The River Bed With Its Five Fingers Spread.
Thinking
One Direction
Rivers
Across The Curve Of The Earth, There Are Women Getting Up Before Dawn, In The Blackness Before The Point Of Light, In The Twilight Before Sunrise; There Are Women Rising Earlier Than Men And Children To Break The Ice, To Start The Stove, To Put Up The Pap, The Coffee, The Rice, To Iron The Pants, To Braid The Hair, To Pull The Day's Water Up From The Well, To Boil Water For Tea, To Wash The Children For School, To Pull The Vegetables And Start The Walk To Market, To Run To Catch The Bus For The Work That Is Paid. I Don't Know When Most Women Sleep.
Running
Children
Twilight
You Have To Give Your Art Everything You Can - I Don't Mean Only Writing, But Studying Other Poets And Poetics, Thinking, Reading What Poets Have Written Other Than Their Poetry.
Art
Reading
Writing
We Need To Imagine A World In Which Every Woman Is The Presiding Genius Of Her Own Body. In Such A World Women Will Truly Create New Life, Bringing Forth Not Only Children If And As We Choose But The Visions, And The Thinking, Necessary To Sustain, Console And Alter Human Existence-a New Relationship To The Universe. Sexuality, Politics, Intelligence, Power, Motherhood, Work, Community, Intimacy Will Develop New Meanings; Thinking Itself Will Be Transformed. This Is Where We Have To Begin.
Children
New Relationship
Motherhood
Experience Is Always Larger Than Language.
Experience
Language
For Now, Poetry Has The Capacity - In Its Own Ways And By Its Own Means - To Remind Us Of Something We Are Forbidden To See.
Mean
Way
Capacity
Poetry Is Above All A Concentration Of The Power Of Language, Which Is The Power Of Our Ultimate Relationship To Everything In The Universe.
Relationship
Language And Power
Concentration
The Worker Can Unionize, Go Out On Strike; Mothers Are Divided From Each Other In Homes, Tied To Their Children By Compassionate Bonds; Our Wildcat Strikes Have Most Often Taken The Form Of Physical Or Mental Breakdown.
Inspiring
Mothers Day
Children
Tv Has Created A Kind Of False Collectivity.
Television
Tvs
Kind
I Don't Want To Succumb To The Idea That For The Generation, Or Generations, Raised On Television, The Text Is Irrelevant Or So Intimidating That They Won't Deal With It. If You Teach, You See This Is Not True. It May Be That Newer Generations Do Not Worship The Text As Some Of Their Elders Do.
Ideas
Generations
Television
No One Has Imagined Us. We Want To Live Like Trees, Sycamores Blazing Through The Sulfuric Air, Dappled With Scars, Still Exuberantly Budding, Our Animal Passion Rooted In The City.
Passion
Animal
Air
A Life I Didn't Choose Chose Me: Even My Tools Are The Wrong Ones For What I Have To Do.
Life
Tools
A Thinking Woman Sleeps With Monsters.
Sleep
Thinking
Monsters
In The Middle-class United States, A Veneer Of "alternative Lifestyles" Disguises The Reality That, Here As Everywhere, Women's Apparent "choices" Whether Or Not To Have Children Are Still Dependent On The Far From Neutral Will Of Male Legislators, Jurists, A Male Medical And Pharmaceutical Profession, Well-financed Lobbies, Including The Prelates Of The Catholic Church, And The Political Reality That Women Do Not As Yet Have Self-determination Over Our Bodies And Still Live Mostly In Ignorance Of Our Authentic Physicality, Our Possible Choices, Our Eroticism Itself.
Determination
Children
Ignorance
But Can You Imagine How Some Of Them Were Envying You Your Freedom To Work, To Think, To Travel, To Enter A Room As Yourself, Not As Some Child’s Mother Or Some Man’s Wife?…we Have No Familiar, Ready-made Name For A Woman Who Defines Herself, By Choice, Neither In Relation To Children Nor To Men, Who Is Self-identified, Who Has Chosen Herself.
Mother
Children
Men
I Long To Create Something That Can't Be Used To Keep Us Passive: I Want To Write A Script About Plumbing, How Every Pipe Is Joined To Every Other.
Knowledge
Writing
Long
When A Woman Tells The Truth She Is Creating The Possibility For More Truth Around Her.
Creating
Telling The Truth
Possibility
My Heart Is Moved By All I Cannot Save: So Much Has Been Destroyed I Have To Cast My Lot With Those Who Age After Age, Perversely, With No Extraordinary Power, Reconstitute The World.
Heart
Age
World
But Nothing Less Than The Most Radical Imagination Will Carry Us Beyond This Place, Beyond The Mere Struggle For Survival, To That Lucid Recognition Of Our Possibilities Which Will Keep Us Impatient, And Unresigned To Mere Survival.
Struggle
Imagination
Survival
How We Dwelt In Two Worlds The Daughters And The Mothers In The Kingdom Of The Sons.
Daughter
Mother
Son
I Am The Androgyne, I Am The Living Mind You Fail To Describe In Your Dead Language The Lost Noun, The Verb Surviving Only In The Infinitive The Letters Of My Name Are Written Under The Lids Of The Newborn Child
Children
Newborn Child
Names
The Will To Change Begins In The Body, Not In The Mind.
Mind
Body
When One Woman Tells Her Truth, It Makes A Space For Other Women To Tell Their Truths.
Healing
Space
One Woman
Women Have Always Been Seen As Waiting: Waited To Be Asked, Waiting For Our Menses, In Fear Lest They Do Or Do Not Come, Waiting For Men To Come Home From Wars, Or From Work, Waiting For Children To Grow Up, Or For The Birth Of A New Child, Or For Menopause.
Children
Growing Up
War
Life On The Planet Is Born Of Woman.
Inspirational Life
Rich Life
Born
Only Where There Is Language Is There World.
World
Language
Re-vision -- The Act Of Looking Back, Of Seeing With Fresh Eyes, Of Entering An Old Text From A New Critical Direction - Is For Women More Than A Chapter In Cultural History: It Is An Act Of Survival.
Eye
Survival
Vision
Language Is Power... Language Can Be Used As A Means Of Changing Reality.
Writing
Mean
Reality
Poetry Can Add Its Grain To An Accumulation Of Consciousness Against The Idea That There Is No Alternative - That We're Just In The Great Flow Of Capitalism And It Can Never Be Any Different - That This Is Human Destiny, This Is Human Nature.
Destiny
Ideas
Flow
I Think Of Poetry As Something Out There In The World And Within Each Of Us. I Don't Mean That Everyone Can Write Poetry - It's An Art, A Craft, It Requires Enormous Commitment Like Any Art. But There's A Core Of Desire In Each Of Us And Poetry Goes To And Comes From That Core. It's The Social, Economic, Institutional Gap That Makes It Difficult.
Art
Writing
Mean
Women Have Been Driven Mad, “gaslighted”, For Centuries By The Refutation Of Our Experience And Our Instincts In A Culture Which Validates Only Male Experience. The Truth Of Our Bodies And Our Minds Has Been Mystified To Us. We Therefore Have Primary Obligation To Each Other: Not To Undermine Each Other’s Sense Of Reality For The Sake Of Expediency; Not To Gaslight Each Other.
Reality
Mad
Mind
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