Best 305 quotes in «uncertainty quotes» category

The living used to wonder what happened after death. She said that whole religions were born and evolved around this one simple uncertainty.

The misconception of something being a certainty sometimes gets to me until I remember we can change most things consciously.

The most difficult step ever is the first step. It comes with doubts, uncertainties, and all sort of fears. If you defy all odd and take it, your confidence will replicate very fast and you'll become a master!

The most self-damaging words in the English language are: try, might, and if. These are words of uncertainty. Will you fail? That is possible. But continue doubting your abilities and you’ll never succeed.

There are things that will happen to you and there is nothing you can do about this. Isn't it exciting beyond belief?

...the ratings agencies' problem was in being unable or uninterested in appreciating the distinction between risk and uncertainty.

The only thing I know for sure is how much I do not know.

The problem with living forever, of course, is you have to live forever before you know you're immortal...or invincible. Even the gods, in this way, must always remain uncertain. Time trumps immortality just as uncertainty trumps omniscience, for a knower can only ever know what it knows, never what it doesn't. (attrib: F.L. Vanderson)

The reason stories have dramatic tension is because LIFE has dramatic tension.

There exists a great uncertainty that comes with life. It is like a tree, its roots formed below the surface, its body penetrating a layer of top soil, its roots spreading outward, and affecting the domain it inhabits. With this natural uncertainty one feels lost, almost incapable of discovering his or her own true purpose. With all of this, one begins to search for that true purpose, always unsure if it is the right path. These feelings come from within, fueled by a catalyst that instills these doubts. However, with its great power, the catalyst is undefinable and unyielding. It is then within question if one can truly move away from the catalyst or really understand how one should feel when affected by it.

There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end.

There have been many many times where the uncertainty of life has made me want to force roots into the soil I'm currently standing on - because I'd rather have roots in any soil - than none at all. I hate living with unknowns.

There's a thin line between an uncertain 'Yes' and a certain 'No' known as 'lame indecisiveness'.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.

There is a saying about surgeons, meant as a reproof: "Sometimes wrong; never in doubt." But this seemed to me their strength. Each day surgeons are faced with uncertainties. Information is inadequate; the science is ambiguous; one's knowledge and abilities are never perfect. Even with the simplest operation, it cannot be taken for granted that a patient will come through better off - or even alive. Standing at the table my first time, I wondered how the surgeon knew that he would do this patient good, that all the steps would go as planned, that the bleeding would be controlled and infection would not take hold and organs would not be injured. He didn't, of course. But still he cut.

There is no greater fear than the fear of uncertainty because the unknown is something that can’t be looked in the face, challenged, overcome.

There's a kind of saying that you don't understand its meaning, 'I don't believe it. It's too crazy. I'm not going to accept it.'… You'll have to accept it. It's the way nature works. If you want to know how nature works, we looked at it, carefully. Looking at it, that's the way it looks. You don't like it? Go somewhere else, to another universe where the rules are simpler, philosophically more pleasing, more psychologically easy. I can't help it, okay? If I'm going to tell you honestly what the world looks like to the human beings who have struggled as hard as they can to understand it, I can only tell you what it looks like.

There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enough.

There was a reason for this: To acknowledge uncertainty was to admit the possibility of error. The entire profession had arranged itself as if to confirm the wisdom of its decisions.

The sun will rise again. The only uncertainty is whether or not we will rise to greet it. Alan Christensen's diary

These are hard and uncertain times we’re living in,” he said. “You never know what will still be here tomorrow. That’s why we must take joy every day in what we do have, so it’s something we can carry in our memories when things change.

these are precisely the conditions that killed love, after first blighting its growth: squalor, fear, uncertainty, overfamiliarity.

The uncertainty, the fear of the unknown was driving him, almost to the point of desperation. He felt as if he was going down a dark stairway, missing a step, hurtling into the unknown and having no idea where he would land.

The trait [Morey] looked for was awareness that they were seeking answers to questions with no certain answers--that they were inherently fallible. "I always ask them, 'Who did you miss?'" he said. Which future superstar had they written off, or which future bust had they fallen in love with? "If they don't give me a good one, I'm like, 'Fuck 'em.

The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt.

The unknown...the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought...The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

Things often have a 50/50 chance of going our way or the other, trust that you will be able to handle the disappointment, change, discomfort and treat it all as an adventure.

The weatherman is always as honest as he is vague.

The world needs us to be fierce enough to see challenges as gifts, to express our unique selves, and to expand the limits of what is possible. The only thing getting in the way is that we get stuck trying to find our way out of pain and discomfort. There is no way to avoid uncertainty. There is no guarantee of safety.

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.

This was the first time I had not just rushed in and followed my instincts, and it wasn't working out. I was beginning to actively regret it.

This is how it is for all of us. Life will send us across a bridge we did not want to cross, but when we finally open our eyes on the other side, we see that there had been nothing to fear at all.

This is it, this was my new home, or prison I wasn't entirely sure yet which. I am not sure if I am ready for anything that is to come, but it seems I have very little choice.

Time is not an enemy as such, but a missing person, sending cryptic postcards from the past.

...to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender...

Time stops for no one, no matter how unsure we are of the future.

To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and feel at home with the unknown.

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.

Ultimately the destruction of the Earth is due in part, perhaps in large part, to a failure of the imagination or to its eclipse by systems of accounting that can’t count what matters. The revolt against this destruction is a revolt of the imagination, in favor of subtleties, of pleasures money can’t buy and corporations can’t command, of being producers rather than consumers of meaning, of the slow, the meandering, the digressive, the exploratory, the numinous, the uncertain.

To try is to accept the possibility of failure. Simply do.

Trap yourself inside your own brain, switch off the light, block all the escape routes, then turn your back on everything you know to be reality and try and survive there. Try. Living. Nowhere.

Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible

Uncertainty in life - It strikes even before you come to know about it or react on it. Death is one of the outcomes .. People are scared of uncertainty ... But I made it my biggest inspiration to live life completely as whenever it strikes i will be certainly ready for it...

Uncertainty is worse than all

Uncertainty is one of government recipes.

To understand this new frontier, I will have to try to master one of the most difficult and counterintuitive theories ever recorded in the annals of science: quantum physics. Listen to those who have spent their lives immersed in this world and you will have a sense of the challenge we face. After making his groundbreaking discoveries in quantum physics, Werner Heisenberg recalled, "I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?" Einstein declared after one discovery, "If it is correct it signifies the end of science." Schrödinger was so shocked by the implications of what he'd cooked up that he admitted, "I do not like it and I am sorry I had anything to do with it." Nevertheless, quantum physics is now one of the most powerful and well-tested pieces of science on the books. Nothing has come close to pushing it off its pedestal as one of the great scientific achievements of the last century. So there is nothing to do but to dive headfirst into this uncertain world. Feynman has some good advice for me as I embark on my quest: "I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

Unanswered? I would've answered any question, Hannah. But you never asked.

Uncertainty isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it can even be filled with extraordinary potential.

We all think of doing something distinctive in life. We all do dream of becoming great and leaving distinctive footprints but, when we get that dream, we must get a clear understanding of what it takes to be great. We must get the real picture of what it takes to live and leave distinctive footprints. We need to understand the real reasons why we must pursue to the end notwithstanding how arduous the journey to greatness may be and the tangible and intangible costs we may have to pay. We must have a nimble mind, move with tenacity and dare without retreating. Though we may be ignorant of the certainty, uncertainty and serendipity we may meet, we must think ahead! Vision shall always be a vision until we take that step of fortitude to make it a reality. When you dream of what is distinctive, make it happen!

Was it a doubt - a fear - a wandering uncertainty seeking rest, but finding none - so tear-blinded were its eyes - Mr. Thornton, instead of being shocked, seemed to have through that very stage of thought himself, and could suggest where the exact ray of light was to be found, which should make the dark places plain. Man of action as he was, busy in the world's great battle, there was a deeper religion binding him to God in his heart, in spite of his strong willfulness, through all his mistakes, than Mr. Hale ever dreamed.