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.

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.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

Certainty is the mother of repose, and therefore the common law aims at certainty.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

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.

The best kind of men have a certainty in themselves that isn't done in when countered by a certainty in their women, and they are much adored.

Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal

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.

It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.

Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

When man thinks in self-conscious submission to the voluntary revelation of the self-sufficient God, he has therewith the only possible ground of certainty for his knowledge.

Certainty is usually a sign of pathology.

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.

If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.

Our children take their flight into the future with our thrust and with our aim. And even as we anxiously watch that arrow in flight and know all the evils that can deflect its course after is has left our hand, nevertheless we take courage in remembering that the most important factor in determining that arrow's destination will be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the bow.

When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.

Digital television is no longer a probability, it is a certainty.

I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me.... If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.

The abuse of the veto power has become so predictable that frequently resolutions are not even tabled because of the certainty of a veto against their adoption. Necessary discussion is thereby suppressed. Concerted action by the Security Council, the General Assembly and other United Nations agencies is necessary to prevent major human rights violations, stop ongoing breaches and provide remedies to victims.

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

I know nothing but the certainty of my own ignorance.

“Et Tu, Babe” was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer’s life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing, it’s my whole life.

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.

The only certainty is uncertainty

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

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.

Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.

In the [John F.] Kennedy case, I believe the absence of a conspiracy can be proved to a virtual certainty.

The 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.

Recalling the aftermath of her father's death from alcoholism at age 42, this memoirist reminisces: I couldn't deny that our life was so much better now, but I did miss him. For all the misery he caused, I knew with certainty that he loved us. Those aren't things you can weigh or measure away. ... They're not opposites that cancel each other out. They're both true at the same time.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

The world is certainty a sudden place.

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

I 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.

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.

In times of uncertainty, we tend to move away from deterministic world views. And when we try to find moral footing for our actions, we compare ourselves to the foil of all foils, the Nazi period. It's a quest for moral certainty by saying, "Even if we're not doing great these days, at least we're not the Third Reich." Which can be consoling or alarmist. There's always a present-day agenda behind it.

The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks.

An 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.

Okay. I'll deal with Benjamin. You're safe, okay? Nothing's gonna happen." His mouth pulled tight against itself. And now I was having some sort of heart attack. Because when he looked at me like that, my chest started to feel like it was turned inside out. "Promise." And that—the promise, the way he said it with utter certainty—was enough to make me tear up again.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

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

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

What can we say with certainty?

The 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.

Clearly it is not reason that has failed. What has failed-as it has always failed-is the attempt to achieve certainty, to reach an absolute, to find the course of human events to a final end. It is not reason that has promised to eliminate risk in human undertakings; it is the emotional needs of men.