We adore chaos because we love to produce order.

                              —M.C. Escher

The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they’re organized for.

              —Laura Ingalls Wilder

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

                           —Denis Diderot

We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order.

            —Margaret J. Wheatley

The desire for order is the only order in the world.

                    —Georges Duhamel

Early in my career I felt that organization would destroy my creativity. Whereas now, I feel the opposite. Discipline is the concrete that allows you to be creative.

                           —Verna Gibson

It is meritorious to insist on forms; religions and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the formed world is our only habitable one.

                       —Thomas Carlyle

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

                            —Pearl S. Buck

One person’s mess is merely another person’s filing system.

                       —Margo Kaufman

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.

                                 —A.A. Milne

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order — willed, faked, and so brought into being.

                             —Anne Dillard

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go till you come to the end; then stop.”

                           —Lewis Carroll