Quotes About Certainty

... moral certainty is certainty which is sufficient to regulate our behaviour, or which measures up to the certainty we have on matters relating to the conduct of life which we never normally doubt, though we know that it is possible, absolutely speaking, that they may be false.

To say that one need art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.

There's one thing that always interests me about you good people, not your certainty that the rest of us are swine, - no doubt we are, - but your certainty that your opinions are pearls.

Certainty without power can be interesting, even amusing. Certainty with power can be dangerous.

Certainty creates strength. Certainty gives one something upon which to learn. Uncertainty creates weakness. Uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant obstacles.

You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.

It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know.

The 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.

He was expressing his certainty that my appeal would be granted, but I was carrying the burden of a sin from which I had to free myself. According to him, human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out it was the former that had condemned me.

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret.... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know... that he was once a man like us.... Here, then, is eternal life - to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves... the same as all Gods have done before you.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the president because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?

A great advantage of X-ray analysis as a method of chemical structure analysis is its power to show some totally unexpected and surprising structure with, at the same time, complete certainty.

The search for the lessons of the new science is still in progress, really in its infancy. In this realm, three is a new kind of freedom, where it is more rewarding to explore than to reach conclusions, more satisfying to wonder than to know, and more exciting to search than to stay put. Curiosity, not certainty, becomes the saving grace.

I think that certainty is a closed door, It's the end of the conversation. Doubt is an open door.

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.

Logic is the foundation of the certainty of all the knowledge we acquire.

As its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we cant predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe. Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it is par excellence the literature of the open mind.

I don't believe anything. I only know some things to a greater degree of certainty than others.

It seems to me that self confidence and the ability to stand one's ground are essential if we want to succeed in life. I am not talking of stupid self-assurance but of an awareness of our inner potential, a certainty that we can always correct our behavior, improve ourselves, enrich ourselves, and that things are never hopeless

Who is so brave and so noble that they could hurl themselves at infinity without any question, with complete trust and complete certainty that that infinity will destroy them forever?

Of course I doubt. I do not practice a certainty. I practice a faith.

The difference between religion and science is the difference between thoughtless certainty and thoughtful doubt.

For any culture which is primarily concerned with meaning, the study of death - the only certainty that life holds for us - must be central, for an understanding of death is the key to liberation in life.

Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.

When I tested for Billy Budd, I had that kind of confidence that comes with the certainty that you're not going to get something. I was very rough around the edges.

Dialogue starts with the willingness to challenge our own thinking, to recognize that any certainty we have is, at best, a hypothesis about the world.

If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I should have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it!

The lack of faith is not doubt. It is certainty.

I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.

Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.

A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of.

We share in the certainty that people labeled with mental illness are first and above all, human beings. Our lives are precious and are of infinite value.

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

In the name of certainty, the greatest crimes have been committed against humanity.

I have always felt that the moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there.

Step by step a powerful and enterprising race has driven them back from the Atlantic to the West until at last there is scarcely a spot of ground upon which the Indians have any certainty of maintaining a permanent abode.

When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience- if only he had had them both at once- would surely have seen them both through.

My God, how badly one calculates in this world! ... Let us leave off calculating on anything but death -- it is the only certainty.

If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'

Change is the investor's only certainty.

When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason, we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will be in that instant gone.

Infinite possibility in all things is a certainty. That pretty much covers theology and philosophy for me.

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.