Quotes About Certainty

Scientists do not believe in fundamental and absolute certainties. For the scientist, certainty is never an end, but a search; not the ordering of certainty, but its exploration. For the scientist, certainty represents the highest degree of probability.

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

While the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless ...; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying 'I know this', we ought to say 'I more or less know something more or less like this'. ... Knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic.

The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty and both - precision and certainty are impossible to attain.

Zealots: Wild eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world, a certainty that can lead to violence when the world doesn't fit.

We move from the illusion of certainty, to the certainty of illusion

A great man, who was convinced that the truths of political and moral science are capable of the same certainty as those that form the system of physical science, even in those branches like astronomy that seem to approximate mathematical certainty. He cherished this belief, for it led to the consoling hope that humanity would inevitably make progress toward a state of happiness and improved character even as it has already done in its knowledge of the truth.

I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

Educators must resist the quest for certainty. If there were certainty there would be no scientific advancement. So it is with morals and patriotism.

Every 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.

Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.

There are many levels of life which we cannot see and know, yet which certainly exist. There is a larger world, vast enough to include immortality.... Our spiritual natures belong to this larger world ... If death is apparently an outward fact, immortality is an inner certainty.

The rocket that goes up next March will not only lift a payload, it will launch what I believe will ultimately be the most significant commercial space facility in the country, ... This launch will be a brilliant signal flare that will let the nation and the world know New Mexico's spaceport is open for business. We can now say with certainty that the dream of this spaceport launching a new era in New Mexico's aerospace industry will become reality.

In my life, the only certainty is to be uncertain. I'm an unbeliever who believes in skepticism. I'm only sure about being unsure.

What I most wanted even at that early age, was to capture and hold the truth, with the certainty and love that it brings.

Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals. . . must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.

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.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

Knowing the precies answers is not as crucial as the certainty that the answers do, in fact, exist.

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

Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture itself is self-authenticated. . . . Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by any one else's judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men.

The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty.

I think I developed a culture of healthy skepticism of claims of certainty on any side of the aisle. A sort of boldness in using economics no matter where it leads you in political circles, you know, rather than worrying about being left-wing or right-wing or biased or this or that.

What unnerves so many liberals about talk radio? Simple: It's the unapologetic nature of the conversation, the unwavering sense of certainty. Where's the nuance? The shades of gray? We all know truth is a fragile butterfly dancing in and out of shadow and light, and these guys act as though truth is a rhino charging across a sunlit veldt.

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?

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.

When we started, I was delivering meals to people in Atlanta. We were a direct-care organization. And it was - people needed meals, they needed transport, they needed medication, they needed buddy systems. They had a death sentence. There was AZT, and that was just prolonging the agony, basically. Now people, of course, if they are on antiretrovirals, they face a lifetime of health, basically. I mean, it doesn't - it's I would say in the 99 percent certainty bracket that if you are on that medication, you will have a healthy life.

We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.

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

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot - and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

There are five dark matters and five lamps. Love of this world is darkness, and the fear of Allaah is its lamp. Sin is darkness, and its lamp is repentance. The grave is darkness, and its lamp is 'none has the right to be worshipped but Allaah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allaah.' The hereafter is darkness, and its lamp is the good deed. The Siraat is darkness, and its lamp is certainty of faith.

Certainty is a cruel mindset.

I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human.

If 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.

These prin­ciples laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up.

Truth is the hardest substance in the world to pin down. But the one certainty is the awesome penalty exacted sooner or later from a society whose reporters stop trying.

What is certainty but the refuge of those whose faith is not strong enough to entertain doubt.

There are no means of attaining faith and certainty except through the Qur'an.

The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.

You were my hope during my days of loneliness, my anxiety during moments of doubt, my certainty during moments of faith.

It is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. The noble soul has reverence for itself.

Learning emerges from discovery, not directives; reflection, not rules; possibilities, not prescriptions; diversity, not dogma; creativity and curiosity, not conformity and certainty; and meaning, not mandates.

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

It is said to await certainty is to await eternity.

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

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