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... 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.
Rene DescartesWe 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 โ 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 donโt 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.
Richard P. FeynmanThe significant contribution of empiricism was not the eradication of certainty, but the eradication of infallibility as a criterion of certainty. And this shift from infallibilism to fallibilism has profound consequences not only for toleration, but also for the subordination of faith to reason and theology to philosophy.
George H. SmithOne 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.
Paul OuterbridgeEducators must resist the quest for certainty. If there were certainty there would be no scientific advancement. So it is with morals and patriotism.
John GoodladEvery 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.
Jonathan AlterMaking no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.
Sun TzuTheory 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.
Gerhard RichterIt is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.
Gottfried LeibnizShe 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 afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
Simone WeilNothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.
George MasonThe big picture is: the main thing you should be concerned about in the future are incremental returns on capital going forward. As it turns out, past history of a good return on capital is a good proxy for this but obviously not foolproof. I think this is an area where thoughtful analysis can add value to any simple ranking/screening strategy such as the magic formula. When doing in depth analysis of companies, I care very much about long term earnings power, not necessarily so much about the volatility of that earnings power but about my certainty of "normal" earnings power over time.
Joel GreenblattSelf-development is the only thing that keeps a person from burning out. We all have many needs - the need for certainty, the need for variety, the need for significance, and the need for connection. But, ultimately, we must grow, and we must contribute in a meaningful way in order to feel fulfilled.
Tony RobbinsSooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made
Bruce CattonThe certainty that she would find what it was she sought just slipped away, until one night she knew there was nothing, no one waiting for her. That no matter how far she walked, how carefully she searched, how much she wanted to find the person she was looking for, she was alone" - The Forgotten Garden
Kate MortonWhat 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.
James LileksAdventure 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.
Adam SmithWe cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.
James Anthony FroudeThe first men who set out for Mars had better make sure they leave everything at home in apple-pie order. They won't get back to earth for more than two and a half years. The difficulties of a trip to mars are formidable. . . . What curious information will these first explorers carry back from Mars? Nobody knows-and its extremely doubtful that anyone now living will ever know. All that can be said with certainty today is this: the trip will be made, and will be made . . . someday.
Wernher von BraunWhen 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.
Elton JohnI 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 LippmannWhen 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.
Terence StampDialogue starts with the willingness to challenge our own thinking, to recognize that any certainty we have is, at best, a hypothesis about the world.
Peter SengeThe press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.
Wendy KaminerI 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.
Madeleine L'EngleI speak "with absolute certainty" only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any "authority" let alone "divine revelation"!
H. P. BlavatskyEvery time an article is written about me or any of my contemporaries who's had the fortune and discipline to look good at a certain age, I am struck by the tone of astonishment, and the certainty that something is being done secretively to beat the devil.
Joan CollinsIt infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all.
Graham GreeneFor a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw several ways, and are ready to strangle one another: For the main Evidence of the Christian Doctrine, which is Miracles, is resolved into the certainty of Sense, but this Evidence is clear and point blank against Transubstantiation.
John TillotsonThe 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.
Salvatore QuasimodoNothing happens carelessly. Weโre not brought into the world without reason, even though we may never understand the reason. An infant that lives an hour, that dies before it can lay eyes on those who made it, even that soul did not live without purpose: this is my sudden certainty.
Clive BarkerLearning 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.
Stephanie Pace MarshallReligion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.
Dan SimmonsThe 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.
Stephen BatchelorIt's strange, isn't it, how the idea of belonging to someone can sound so great? It can be comforting, the way it makes things decided. We like the thought of being held, until it's too tight. We like that certainty, until it means there's no way out. And we like being his, until we realize we're not ours anymore.
Deb CalettiNo sooner had he thought this than he realized what was anchoring his happiness. It was purpose. He knew what he wanted to do. He knew the way he thought things should be, and Mr. Harinton was proving that other people--even adults--could feel the same way. Nicholas had something to aim for now. He might not know what he wanted to be when he grew up, but he knew with absolute certainty how he wanted to be.
Trenton Lee StewartDevotion to the facts will always give the pleasures of recognition; adherence to the rules of design, the pleasures of order and certainty.
Kenneth ClarkI am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them.... 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. LewisThe attitude of mourning is a faithless attitude, an ignorant attitude. The more we know, the more fully we shall trust, for we shall feel with utter certainty that we and our dead are alike in the hands of perfect Power and perfect Wisdom, directed by perfect Love.
Charles Webster LeadbeaterScience is not marginal. Like art, it is a universal possession of humanity, and scientific knowledge has become a vital part of our species' repertory. It comprises what we know of the material world with reasonable certainty. . . . Thanks to science and technology, access to factual information of all kinds is rising exponentially.
E. O. Wilson