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Look at the chaos of European history. Europeans cannot believe in certainty. But Americans believe in certainty. Americans think this can go on like this forever. Just as it is. No change.
Carl AndreThe significant contribution of empiricism was not the eradication of certainty, but the eradication of infallibility as a criterion of certainty. And this shift from infallibilism to fallibilism has profound consequences not only for toleration, but also for the subordination of faith to reason and theology to philosophy.
George H. SmithEvery patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness.
Jonathan AlterMaking no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.
Sun TzuThe main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail... You can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.
Conor Cruise O'BrienAnd when I wake up it's wonderful, like I've been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and the dream, and its meaning, has broken over me like a wave and is ebbing away now, leaving me with a single, solid certainty. I know now.
Lauren OliverJealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Francois de La RochefoucauldWhat I most wanted even at that early age, was to capture and hold the truth, with the certainty and love that it brings.
Neil TurokThere is a painful difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event and its final certainty.
Emma ThompsonPeople are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, โWell, are you a Republican or an American?โ The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, โI don't have a knowledge that God exists.โ The atheist says, โI don't have a belief that God exists.โ You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.
Dan BarkerJust as the spectroscope opened up a new astronomy by enabling the astronomer to determine some of the constituents of which distant stars are composed, so the seismograph, recording the unfelt motion of distant earthquakes, enables us to see into the earth and determine its nature with as great a certainty, up to a certain point, as if we could drive a tunnel through it and take samples of the matter passed through.
Richard Dixon OldhamNo plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.
Helmuth von Moltke the ElderBiblical hope is not wishful thinking or an optimistic outlook; rather, it is a confident expectation based on the certainty of God's Word that as He has anchored us in the past, so He will in the future.
David WilkersonSweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something itโs not meant to be, isnโt a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. Itโs actually thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of an inner disquiet, a warning signal that deep down we do not really trust God at all.
Peter EnnsLove must neither beg nor demand. Love must be strong enough to find certainty within itself. It then cease to be moved and becomes the mover.
Hermann HesseWe had been hopelessly labouring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of Godโฆ Among the tribes our creed could be only like the desert grass โ a beautiful swift seeming of spring; which, after a dayโs heat, fell dusty.
T. E. LawrenceA common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.
Cyril Norman HinshelwoodThe first men who set out for Mars had better make sure they leave everything at home in apple-pie order. They won't get back to earth for more than two and a half years. The difficulties of a trip to mars are formidable. . . . What curious information will these first explorers carry back from Mars? Nobody knows-and its extremely doubtful that anyone now living will ever know. All that can be said with certainty today is this: the trip will be made, and will be made . . . someday.
Wernher von BraunBe sure of the foundation of your life. Know why you live as you do. Be ready to give a reason for it. Do not, in such a matter as life, build an opinion or custom on what you guess is true. Make it a matter of certainty and science.
Thomas Starr King... the body, normally, is never in question: our bodies are beyond question, or perhaps beneath question - they are simply, unquestionably, there. This unquestionability of the body, is, for Wittgenstein, the start and basis of all knowledge and certainty.
Oliver SacksIn the [John F.] Kennedy case, I believe the absence of a conspiracy can be proved to a virtual certainty.
Vincent BugliosiLife to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.
Arthur SchopenhauerWhy had we come to the moon? The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk an even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me that there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made to go about safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. ... against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and he must go.
H. G. WellsIt wasn't shared social status or ethnicity that brought Jesus' followers together either, nor was it total agreement on exactly who this Jesus character was - a prophet? The Messiah? The Son of God? No, there is one thing that connected all these dissimilar people together it was a shared sense of need: a hunger, a thirst, a longing. It was the certainty that, when Jesus said He came for the sick, this meant Jesus came for me.
Rachel Held EvansBut just as much as it is easy to find the differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not.
Johann BernoulliEvery time an article is written about me or any of my contemporaries who's had the fortune and discipline to look good at a certain age, I am struck by the tone of astonishment, and the certainty that something is being done secretively to beat the devil.
Joan CollinsI love you," he said. "You're more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone else can be. And I've made you cry; and there I'll stop." She was crying, but not because of his words. It was because of a certainty she refused to consider while she sat before him.
Kristin CashoreIf you raise your standards but don't really believe you can meet them, you've already sabotaged yourself. You won't even try; you'll be lacking the sense of certainty that allows you to tap the deepest capacity that's within you... Our beliefs are like unquestioned commands, telling us how things are, what's possible and impossible and what we can and can not do. They shape every action, every thought and every feeling that we experience. As a result, changing our belief systems is central to making any real and lasting change in our lives.
Tony RobbinsI said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
Gilbert K. ChestertonBeauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.
Tom StoppardIt is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.
William Sloane CoffinPower tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
Lord ActonAn expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions - excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear - that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.
Haruki MurakamiDoubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?
Philip YanceyWe have to be mindful that there is the certainty that terrorists will attempt to launch multiple attacks against their enemy, which is us and our allies.
Cofer BlackI'm for open-mindedness and tolerance. I'm against any form of fanaticism, fundamentalism or zealotry, and this certainty of 'We have the truth.' The truth is far too large and complex. Nobody has the truth.
Philip PullmanEverything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty. (10)
Sheldon B. KoppDevotion to the facts will always give the pleasures of recognition; adherence to the rules of design, the pleasures of order and certainty.
Kenneth ClarkAll our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.
Maurice MaeterlinckWhat is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.
Harriet Beecher Stowe