Best 305 quotes in «uncertainty quotes» category

...if I have learned any one thing over the years, it's that life contains too many variables for us to be absolutely certain about anything. In the last analysis, there is no accounting for the human factor. It is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose.

If I knew what to do I'd do more than write a song for you

If we find ourselves in unfamiliar circumstance, what do we do? We ought to keep calm and pray.

If your goal is to deliver a product that meets a known and unchanging specification, then try a repeatable process. However, if your goal is to deliver a valuable product to a customer within some targeted boundaries, when change and deadlines are significant factors, then reliable Agile processes work better.

If our future generations were much wilier than us, then it might be them who have led us all this time, to make decisions which fit to their pre-existence, left us live in the world of uncertainty or by faith.

I hate the fact that it obsesses me so much. Who're we gonna end up with? It's a race, and everyone else is on the tracks and I'm at the wrong venue, with the wrong shoes on." "That's rubbish. He's out there, I promise." "How do you know?" " I don't," said Elle firmly. " I just like to kid myself that he is. And if he's not, well, there's more to life than just hanging around ruining your life waiting for him. Much more.

I had always been blithely convinced that if I followed the side roads for long enough I’d trip over something wonderful, that thing you never know you’re looking for until you land on it that suddenly makes the universe a much bigger place than it ever had been before.

If you've never known love, you never know where it is, you don't know what it looks like or it sounds like, you look in the most unlikely places to find it.

I know that I do not know, and uncertainty, certainly, is the cruelest of words.

I'm afraid I don't know who I am either! But I've turned my head off so long, I don't need to know.

I love uncertainty, the feeling of being lost. When you're lost, you're free.

I'm comfortable with the unknown -- that's the point of science. There are places out there, billions of places out there, that we know nothing about. And the fact that we know nothing about them excites me, and I want to go out and find out about them. And that's what science is. So I think if you’re not comfortable with the unknown, then it’s difficult to be a scientist… I don’t need an answer. I don’t need answers to everything. I want to have answers to find.

In America and Europe, it was said, people know what is going to happen when they turn on the water tap or flick on the light switch. In India, a land of few safe assumptions, chronic uncertainty was said to have helped produce a nation of quick-witted, creative problem-solvers.

In a world of increasing uncertainty, expect...

Indeed, on close inspection one sees that by far the greater number of educated people still desire convictions from a thinker and nothing but convictions, and that only a small minority want certainty. The former want to be forcibly carried away in order thereby to obtain an increase of strength; the latter few have the real interest which disregards personal advantages and the increase of strength also. The former class, who greatly predominate, are always reckoned upon when the thinker comports himself and labels himself as a genius, and thus views himself as a higher being to whom authority belongs. In so far as genius of this kind upholds the ardour of convictions, and arouses distrust of the cautious and modest spirit of science, it is an enemy of truth, however much it may think itself the wooer thereof.

Indeed, wounded loved can make for fierce vengeance. And, from what I know of Anissa, it does seem a bit out of character for her to behave so spitefully, so I'd like to think that she really is just deeply hurt, angry and looking for some way to injure me back...I hope she knows how well she's succeeded.

In my early fifties, I was going through a phase where few things felt right and I was trying to figure out those that did. It was not uncommon. In your twenties, you pursue your dreams. By your late thirties and early forties, you hit a certain stride. Then you hit your fifties, you get your first annoying thoughts of mortality, you begin more serious questioning of not just the meaning of your life but of what’s working, what’s not working, and what you still want, and all of a sudden you don’t know which way is up. You thought you knew but don’t. You just want to get to where life feels okay again.

In my life, I had lost only two things: my favorite pair of gloves and a handful of my favorite people. But now? Now I was starting to lose the ground under my feet.

I'm afraid of everything I don't know.

In today's ambiguous world, character means despotism, tyranny, absolute intolerance. At last it is time to admire a lack of character, inner weakness. Our epoch is that of noble doubts, blessed uncertainty, sacred hypersensitivity, divine wishy-washiness.

In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.

In these dark and uncertain times, there can be great value in imagining a bit of star in each human soul. Not just that it gives some hope for humanity at a time when man’s inhumanity to man seems ever on the increase; but also because it points to an inner brightness that can light the way in dark times.

It is better to explore a gainful uncertainty than to sit in a painful certainty.

I think Kitaru is honestly seeking something,” I went on. “In his own way, at his own pace. It’s just that I don’t think he’s grasped yet what it is. That’s why he can’t make any progress. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s not easy to look for it.

It is often mild distraction that moves imagination forward, not uninterrupted concentration. Thinking then works by indirection, sauntering in a roundabout way to places it cannot reach directly.

It is debatable whether blind faith is truly faith at all. Faith is the perceptive gray area where scientific facts meet an individual's experiential truths - the extreme of the former is left feeling in the dark whereas the latter is caught blinded by the light. By proper scientific method, it is intellectually dishonest for me to declare the existence of God with utmost certainty, but to my individual spirit, I would be intellectually dishonest to deny the existence of God even for a second. This leaves the best of both worlds, as the believer is called to be able to give reasons for his faith, a deviation from mere fantasy.

It is uncertainty which fills life with beauty, excitement, and joy.

It doesn't count if it's from friends, right?

It is Tuesday, near dusk. Night creeps in and strips colors from the scene. Everything is purplish. There have been many Tuesdays in the Minotaur‘s life. He wonders how this one will end.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

it's ok to feel unsure. it's fine to not know. keep in mind that uncertainty doesn't last forever. clarity always shows up for us.

It's hard to know what happy is if you're not sure if you've felt it before.

It sometimes requires ignorance and arrogance to know something for sure.

It's okay to be honest about not knowing rather than spreading falsehood. While it is often said that honesty is the best policy, silence is the second best policy.

It was the promise of maybe, maybe one day.

It’s the uncertainty of being accepted that creates the drama in our lives.

It’s not enough to wish, dream, hope. Even children know this. We must set sail into the sea of uncertainty. We must meet fear face-to-face. We must take our dreams as maps for a greater journey. Dreams, to come true, need a good story. So go live one.

I wasn’t sure what was worse: being oblivious or living within reality. (Eric)

I wanted to tell her then that I loved her. I thought that might help, by grounding us in something we were sure about rather than everything we weren't.

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

…Look, I’m real sorry about Cheryl, I know you loved her a lot,” Mandy apologized gloomily. “It’s wrong that people have to keep killing off Pollution.” “It’s alright, I think she wants to be remediated,” Alecto told her calmly, though his grief-stricken and depressed expression said more to Mandy than his words did. “You don’t have to forget Cheryl, no matter what Mearth said to you,” Mandy pointed out. “People shouldn’t be forced to forget what they love, or to just get over the death of what they love. Cheryl was your friend and nobody can make you forget her if you don’t want to.

I was told that the disorder was not really in my eyes, but in my central nervous system. I might or might not experience symptoms of neural damage all my life. These symptoms, which might or might not appear, might or might not involve my eyes. They might or might not involve my arms or legs, they might or might not be disabling. Their effects might be lessened by cortisone injections, or they might not. It could not be predicted. The condition had a name, the kind of name usually associated with telethons, but the name meant nothing and the neurologist did not like to use it. The name was multiple sclerosis, but the name had no meaning. This was, the neurologist said, an exclusionary diagnosis, and meant nothing. I had, at this time, a sharp apprehension not of what it was like to be old but of what it was like to open the door to the stranger and find that the stranger did indeed have the knife. In a few lines of dialogue in a neurologist’s office in Beverly Hills, the improbable had become the probable, the norm: things which happened only to other people could in fact happen to me. I could be struck by lightning, could dare to eat a peach and be poisoned by the cyanide in the stone. The startling fact was this: my body was offering a precise physiological equivalent to what had been going on in my mind.

......Love is not only weird, but elusive too.

Love's Course A boatman crossing Yura Strait Has lost his rudder, and the boat Is drifting with uncertain fate, Like love's course, indeterminate.

Maar wie het zeker weet, is per definitie niet nieuwsgierig. Wie koste wat het kost vasthoudt aan zijn overtuigingen, staat nooit open voor nieuwe informatie. Willen we goed met cijfers – en informatie in het algemeen – omgaan, dan zullen we die onzekerheid moeten omarmen.

Maturity means being able to tolerate, on all sorts of planes, uncertainty and not knowing.

Looking at Tim, one cannot help feeling great waves of uncertainty, an absence of aim, of purpose, as if he is a person who simply doesn’t matter.

Many times in life we’ll look far into our future with uncertainty. None of us can predict the future, so enjoying life one day at a time will remain much easier and fulfilling.

Naturally, I always place my word over anyone else's simply because I know why I said what I said.

Nearly two years of dates. Still no question. Her mother and father want to set a proper date. Still no question. Her friends keep asking, when, Natasha? When? But she still hasn’t been asked The Question. It’s enjoyable to be the one with all the secrets, but in her honest mind – the hidden part that’s always sleeping – the secrets he keeps about when and if give her a feeling inside she’s never really understood completely – a sensation she had as a child when she got to the end of a fairytale where never-ending love and happiness were all but expected and wondered whether there might be…. one last page.