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The propositions of mathematics have, therefore, the same unquestionable certainty which is typical of such propositions as "All bachelors are unmarried," but they also share the complete lack of empirical content which is associated with that certainty: The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter.
Carl Gustav HempelThe only difference between causation and the value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference. In classical science it was supposed that the world always works in terms of absolute certainty and that "cause" is the more appropriate word to describe it. But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences.
Robert M. PirsigWhat I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
Michael CunninghamThe unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
Charles BaudelaireShe loved Bram in a clear-eyed way sheโd never loved her ex-husband, no rose-colored glasses or mindless giddiness, no Cinderella fantasies or false certainty that heโd put her life in order. What she felt for Bram was messy, honest, and soul-deep. He felt likeโฆpart of her, the best and the worst. Like someone she wanted to struggle through life with; share triumphs and catastrophes; share holidays, birthdays, every days
Susan Elizabeth PhillipsThe best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians-when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.
Joseph C. AldrichCogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
Ambrose BierceDoubt 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.
Thomas SzaszWe all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation.
Gustav MahlerIn spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people who would shut up the human race upon this globe, we shall one day travel to the Moon, the planets, and the stars with the same facility, rapidity and certainty as we now make the ocean voyage from Liverpool to New York.
Jules VerneI don't believe anything. I only know some things to a greater degree of certainty than others.
John RymanAnd yet we knew, for a certainty, that when first emissaries of Earth went walking among the planets, Earth's other sons would be dreaming not about such expeditions but about a piece of bread.
Stanislaw LemI have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.
William Boydas a bird swoops down on it's prey, and assumes this land bound wretch into heaven, so did romeo steal her lips before they fled him again. suspended somewhere between cherubs and devils, his quarry ceased to buck, and he spread his wings wide and let the rising wind carry them off across the sky, until even the predator himself had lost every hope of returning home. within that one embrace, [he] became aware of a feeling of certainty he had not thought possible for anyone - even the virtuous. with her in his arms, all other women, past, present, and future, simply ceased to exist.
Anne FortierIt's true that a dangerous combination of certainty and ignorance often shows up around sex and consent on campus. People on all sides of the issue have such strong feelings about it that they're blinded to the facts.
Vanessa GrigoriadisI do not despise genius-indeed, I wish I had a basketful of it. But yet, after a great deal of experience and observation, I have become convinced that industry is a better horse to ride than genius. It may never carry any man as far as genius has carried individuals, but industry-patient, steady, intelligent industry-will carry thousands into comfort, and even celebrity; and this it does with absolute certainty.
Walter LippmannOne must treat theory-in-use as both a psychological certainty and an intellectual hypothesis.
Chris ArgyrisAnd it would be a spare life he would be certain to lead as a schoolteacher in some urban location. But he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live. And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by.
Michael Ondaatje... 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 SacksI am a product of endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic...In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.
C. S. LewisIn short, is American life of the future to be characterized by freedom or by servitude, strength or weakness? The answer must be clear and unequivocal if we are to avoid the pitfalls toward which we are now heading with such certainty. In many respects it is not to be found in any dogma of political philosophy but in those immutable precepts which underlie the Ten Commandments.
Douglas MacArthurOnce you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.
Henry MillerThe remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.
Eric HofferRevolution is the only thing, the only power, that ever worked out freedom for any people. The powers that have ruled long and learned to love ruling, will never give up that prerogative until they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow and destruction if they do not. To plant-to revolutionize-these are the twin stars that have ruled our pathway. What have we then to dread in the word Revolution-we, the children of rebels!
Wendell PhillipsIf you are seeking for security, certainty, your eyes will become closed. And you will be less and less surprised and you will lose the capacity to wonder. Once you lose the capacity to wonder, you have lost religion. Religion is the opening of your wondering heart. Religion is a receptivity for the mysterious that surrounds us. Don't seek security; don't seek advice on how to live your life.
RajneeshI never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.
Alain de BottonWas there another life she was meant to be living? At times she felt a keen certainty that there was โ a phantom life, taunting her from just out of reach. A sense would come over her while she was drawing or walking, and once while she was dancing slow and close with Kaz, that she was supposed to be doing something else with her hands, with her legs, with her body. Something else. Something else. Something else.
Laini TaylorWe all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.
James ThurberYou were my hope during my days of loneliness, my anxiety during moments of doubt, my certainty during moments of faith.
Paulo CoelhoStep 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.
Nelson A. MilesAn 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 MurakamiDo not lose hope; St. Joseph also experienced moments of difficulty, but he never lost faith and was able to overcome them, in the certainty that God never abandons us.
Pope FrancisThe man who saves time by galloping loses it by missing his way; the shepherd who hurries his flock to get them home spends the night on the mountain looking for the lost; economy does not consist in haste, but in certainty.
Ramsay MacDonaldDevotion to the facts will always give the pleasures of recognition; adherence to the rules of design, the pleasures of order and certainty.
Kenneth ClarkWe say, then, to anyone who is under trial, give Him time to steep the soul in His eternal truth. Go into the open air, look up into the depths of the sky, or out upon the wideness of the sea, or on the strength of the hills that is His also; or, if bound in the body, go forth in the spirit; spirit is not bound. Give Him time and, as surely as dawn follows night, there will break upon the heart a sense of certainty that cannot be shaken.
Amy CarmichaelIt is way less certain to be a wonderful business in the future. The threat is alternative mediums of information. Every newspaper is scrambling to parlay their existing advantage into dominance on the Internet. But it is way less sure [that this will occur] than the certainty 20 years ago that the basic business would grow steadily, so there's more downside risk. The perfectly fabulous economics of this business could become grievously impaired.
Charlie Munger