Best 310 quotes in «certainty quotes» category

There you go again, declaring the exact inverse of your experience. You human pups are so full of the things you're sure of. Sit down and listen for a change.

The road is certain for anyone who ventures near it.

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur.

The South African artist William Kentridge speaks to this type of certainty: 'To say that one needs art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.' The outcome of the current crisis is already determined.

To be secure in one’s convictions is thus to be absurdly oxymoronic, since conviction is really a state of insecurity. If you know something for a fact, you have no need to believe it or to be convinced of it. You need belief only when you are not sure. Belief is thus the product not of knowledge, but of uncertainty. It contains within itself the possibility of disbelief. "Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto

They say, "Look before you leap." So look. But do not look for too long. Do not look into the void of uncertainty trying to predict each and every possible outcome, to evaluate every possible mistake, to prevent each possible failure. Look for the opportunity to leap, and leap faster than your fear can grab you. Leap before you talk yourself out of it, before you convince yourself to set up a temporary camp that turns into a permanent delay on your journey into your own heart.

Though what could anyone really say these days with one hundred percent certainty?

What can you do with a person who says that he is absolutely uncertain about everything, and that he is absolutely certain about that?

To say that one must live in uncertainty doesn’t begin to get at a tenuous, precarious nature of faith. The minute you begin to speak with certitude about God, he is gone. We praise people for having strong faith, but strength is only one part of that physical metaphor: one also needs FLEXIBILITY.

Un vaso medio vacío de vino, es también uno medio lleno; pero una mentira a medias, de ningún modo es una media verdad.

We're all bewildered, but most bewildered of all are those who think they know the truth.

What was sureness and certainty? I used to hold on to certainty like a light inside me, hoping it would chase out the dark unknown. But certainty was a phantom strung together on hopes. It would lead you astray at the first chance.

When you stop trying to force the Bible to be something it's not--static, perspicacious, certain, absolute--then you're free to revel in what it is: living, breathing, confounding, surprising, and yes, perhaps even magic.

Yet it is unassailably true that so long as we lack omniscience and do not know all of the future, all our generalizations are fallible or only probable. And the history of human error shows that a general consensus, or widespread and unquestioned feeling of certainty, does not preclude the possibility that the future may show us to be in error.

You can be dead sure and still be dead wrong.

You have only as a result of certainty.

Whatever doubt might rise, he knew that he was right. But the rightness was an intellectual rightness and the doubt emotional.

What kind of husband would I be if I bet against my own marriage?' I smiled. 'The stupid kind. Didn't you listen to your dad when he told you not to bet against me?

When nothing is certain in your life, you have a blank canvas to work with. You can determine a new future for yourself with passionate actions. You can pursue anything that you put your mind to. When things seem uncertain it is the best time to take action.

when the uncertainty is known, certainty is guaranteed. Until we unravel the uncertainties of our lives, we shall always be uncertain with the life we live

You are as wealthy as you are certain.

You cannot be uncertain, because you know.

A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.

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.

At Oxford University, the certainties of my atheist faith (and atheism is a faith) began to crumble

But teleological considerations can lead no further than to a belief and a hope. They do not give certainty.

Antisappointment. Anticipation colliding head-on with the certainty of its own doom.

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.

Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature.

Certainty is a cruel mindset.

Certainty is usually a sign of pathology.

Claiming certainty without corroborating evidence is stupid.

Death, in its certainty, is exacting its due respect and repose before it takes my hand.

Deciding under uncertainty is bad enough, but deciding under an illusion of certainty is catastrophic.

Action based on hope just felt better than the paralysis of certainty.

Calculus works by making visible the infinitesimally small.

Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal

Certainties are arrived at only on foot.

Certainty abolishes hope, and robs us of renewal.

Certitude is not the test of certainty.

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.

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

Certainty is rarely if ever possible and we increase the likelihood of getting things wrong if we succumb to the hunger for it.

Certainty, not data, is knowledge.

Certainty without power can be interesting, even amusing. Certainty with power can be dangerous.

Change is the investor's only certainty.

Continually revise your relationship to God until the only certainty you have is not that you are faithful, but that He is.

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

Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one; and if we don't see this, it's because we are blinding ourselves to it.