Quotes About Uncertainty

Decision-making is difficult because, by its nature, it involves uncertainty. If there was no uncertainty, decisions would be easy! The uncertainty exists because we don't know the future, we don't know if the decision we make will lead to the best possible outcome. Cognitive science has taught us that relying on our gut or intuition often leads to bad decisions, particularly in cases where statistical information is available. Our guts and our brains didn't evolve to deal with probabilistic thinking.

In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, from the prison of past conditioning. Uncertainty is the fertile ground of creativity and freedom.

My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'

Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.

Zizi was young and often confused about how to live his life, �and when he made a choice he clung to it with fierce resolve, �as if to beat his uncertainty into submission.

Having the choice at the end of my life has become incredibly important. It has given me a sense of peace during a time that otherwise would be dominated by fear, uncertainty and pain.

A state of expectancy is a great assetl; a state of uncertainty-one moment thinking "perhaps" and the next moment thinking "I don't know"-will never get desired results.

Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.

Decreasing economic growth and increasing inequality leads to increased uncertainty.

When I talk about an "empathy bank," I don't mean literally opening up a bank and putting in deposits. What I mean is that the more we can, as individuals and as members of a community, empathize with, understand the pain and uncertainty economic crisis causes other people, the more we lay the groundwork for political change.

I'm in the camp that needs to discover and take risks, sometimes it's with the promise of something special and new, sometimes it's to stay awake, either way it's much more stressful with all the uncertainty but worth the pain in the end.

When a movie is about to come out on its initial debut, there are a lot of people involved - the financiers, the studio and the producers and also, many times, the foreign distributors. So it is a time of tremendous pressure and uncertainty.

My uncertainty disappeared. Segregation is evil, and I cannot, as a minister, condone evil.

We know that the warming rising seas will swallow entire island nations that are about 25 percent of the UN vote and perhaps at the end, even our civilization. This realization is traumatic and the first reaction to trauma is denial. Since there is some remaining scientific uncertainty, a natural response is to deny that change is occurring. This is natural but it is very dangerous.

A sense of uncertainty that is potentially fatal is what makes climbing an adventure. Anything less is just working out

[The necessary and proper clause] neither enlarges any power specifically granted; nor is it a grant of any new power to Congress; But it is merely a declaration, for the removal of all uncertainty, that the means of carrying into execution those otherwise granted are included in the grant.

How small we humans are. All our scrambling around, trying to buttress ourselves against death. All our efforts to insulate ourselves against uncertainty with codes of behavior and meaningless busyness.

Violence, with its ever-present economy of uncertainty, fear, and terror, is no longer merely a side effect of police brutality, war, or criminal behavior. It has become fundamental to neoliberalism as a particularly savage facet of capitalism. And in doing so it has turned out to be central to legitimating those social relations in which the political and pedagogical are redefined in order to undercut possibilities for authentic democracy.

The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness.

It was like sawdust, the unhappiness: it infiltrated everything, everything was a problem, everything made her cry - school, homework, boyfriends, the future, the lack of future, the uncertainty of future, fear of future, fear in general - but it was so hard to say exactly what the problem was in the first place.

Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times.

Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is, that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees; so our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience; and the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be under arms.

I think our brains does have a tendency to be true to its own ideas and statements. Everything we do and everything we think about is a belief. Until we get to the point where we look beyond our own ego-self, and to some degree beyond our own mind, we are always going to make assumptions and have beliefs to make our brains feel more comfortable. And if we can get to a point where we embrace that uncertainty and doubt, and be willing to learn from that and to explore that, I think that that could be a very positive experience.

Moses became Americas true founding father because he evangelized action; he justified risk. He gave ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty.

Trust in my wisdom. I do not make mistakes. Love my uncertainty for it is not a mistake. It is my intent and will. Remember - nothing happens without my will. Be still. Do not ask to understand. Do not want to understand.

Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.

An American leader would be derelict of duty if he did not seek to understand all his options in such unprecedented circumstances. Presidents Lincoln during the Civil War and Roosevelt in the lead-up to World War II sought legal advice about the outer bounds of their power - even if they did not always use it. Our leaders should ask legal questions first, before setting policy or making decisions in a fog of uncertainty.

I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let’s think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow—that’s vulnerability.

All uncertainty is fruitfull ... so long as it is accompanied by the wish to understand

Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high quality goods. The unit of progress for Lean Startups is validated learning-a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty.

Uncertainty in a leader is always magnified in the heart of the follower.

I am an artist, I trade in uncertainty and superstition and cant. I invent dark visions of impossible situations that can never be resolved.

Macroeconomic stability will be more elusive and that will affect all of our lives: from the risks many will face in childhood, to the security of employment at working age, to the challenge of accumulating for retirement. More financial instability will introduce more uncertainty all down the line, and that will be a very different world than the one we would have lived in only a couple of decades ago.

There's only one thing that can save a man from madness and that's uncertainty.

A perfect storm is in the making: financial uncertainty, economic downturn, government cuts, rising unemployment and a future that looks less clear the more we try to fathom it.

Products a start-up builds are really experiments…Learning about how to build a sustainable business is the outcome of those experiments [which follow] a three-step process: Build, measure, learn.” “[A startup is] … an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

The shadow of fear and uncertainty lies over most of us; for us the future seems far from being as clear and open as we believed it would be.

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.

Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.

Every year there's a few more things I'm not sure of. I've decided that a wide-ranging uncertainty is the mark of the true maturity of man.

Fear comes from uncertainty; we can eliminate the fear within us when we know ourselves better.

There are no conventional games involving conditions of uncertainty without risk.

They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte's indecision in every word she didn't say and every move she didn't make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn't pulling away, either.

Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts.

It is the job of leaders to eliminate uncertainty.

To accpet the world as boring or accpet oneself as boring? Which is really more agreeable? There's bound to be some amount of ambiguity and uncertainty.

Wherever there is change, and wherever there is uncertainty, there is opportunity!