Quotes About Certainty

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.

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.

One very important difference between color and monochromatic photography is this: in black and white you suggest; in color you state. Much can be implied by suggestion, but statement demands certainty... absolute certainty.

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

... I feel certain that his tale is true. Feeling that certainty, I befriend him. As long as that certainty shall last, I will befriend him. And if any consideration could shake me in this resolve, I should be so ashamed of myself for my meanness, that no man's good opinion - no, nor no woman's - so gained, could compensate me for the loss of my own.

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.

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

We find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known with different degrees of certainty: "It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true".

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.

That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!

The Scripture abounds in commands and cautions for our utmost diligence in our search and inquiry as to whether we are made partakers of Christ or not, or whether His Spirit dwells in us or not-which argue both the difficulty of attaining an assured confidence herein, as also the danger of our being mistaken, and yet the certainty of a good issue upon the diligent and regular use of means to that purpose.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

God is in the mountains. Impassive, immovable, jagged giants, separating the celestial from the terrestrial with eternal diagonal certainty. As if silently monitoring the beating heart of the creator from the universe's perfect birth. Stood in the thin air and the awe, one inhales God, involuntarily acknowledging that we are but fragments of a whole, a higher thing. The mountains remind me of my place, as a servant to truth and wonder. Yes, God is in the mountains. Perhaps the pulpit too and even in the piety of an atheist's sigh. I don't know; but I feel him in the mountains.

We have to deal with this new type of threat in a way we haven’t yet defined. . . . With a low-probability, high-impact event like this . . . If there’s a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.

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.

Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress.

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?

Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it’s not meant to be, isn’t a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It’s 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.

It'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.

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

We are talking about capital-intensive enterprises, so market certainty is the key. Investors and entrepreneurs have to know that there will be a guaranteed U.S. renewable energy market in which they can compete. Otherwise, they will create the next generation of green companies and green jobs in Asia, not here.

The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.

Can you predict the future with absolute certainty? Your answer must be no. You have two options: You can either decide to accept yourself as an imperfect human being with limited knowledge and realize that you will at times make mistakes, or you can hate yourself for it.

You want to be a hero? Learn to create certainty in the face of fear.

What has the Cross left in each of us? You see, it gives us a treasure that no one else can give: the certainty of the faithful love which God has for us. A love so great that it enters into our sin and forgives it, enters into our suffering and gives us the strength to bear it. It is a love which enters into death to conquer it and save us.

A Christian is not a skeptic. A Christian is a person with a burning heart, a heart set aflame with certainty of the resurrection.

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.

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.

Faith does not rely on knowing anything with certainty. It requires only the courage to accept that whatever happens is for the highest good.

Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life-gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.

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

Happiness is above all things the calm, glad certainty of innocence.

Love, I thought to myself abstractedly. Not 'This is love' or 'Is this love?' Not a sentence, not a certainty, not a thought with moving parts or direction. Just love, all of it, as it is. Whether it's enough or not. Wthether it's real or we're making it up. However shoddy it gets, or bent out of shape. It's still extraordinary. However foolish, however vain. However badly it ends. Love.

All writers - all beings - are exiles as a matter of course. The certainty about living is that it is a succession of expulsions of whatever carries the life force...All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land.

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

Your imagination is ten times more potent than your willpower. Unleashed, it provides a sense of certainty and tenacious vision that goes far beyond any limitation of the past.

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.

We do know, with absolute certainty, that Saddam Hussein is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

Was there another life she was meant to be living? At times she felt a keen certainty that there was ― 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.

I accept that life is uncertain--that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next. And then, miracle of miracles, out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing--a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.

Let us never give in to pessimism, to that bitterness that the devil offers us every day. Do not give in to pessimism and discouragement. We have the firm certainty that the Holy Spirit gives the Church with His mighty breath, the courage to persevere and also to seek new methods of evangelization, to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.

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.

Peoples of the entire world need to hear these words. Their conscience needs to grow in the certainty that Someone exists who holds in His Hands the destiny of this passing world... And this Someone is Love- Love that became Man, Love crucified and risen, Love unceasingly present among men. It is Eucharistic Love.

Life is ever evolving. The only certainty is change.

Change is the investor's only certainty.

Do 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.

Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.