Certainty Quotes

In some cases, I am able to respect what so many call bigots. Such people have a more solid foundation for drawing their lines when it comes to the security of their ways and quite possibly the security of mankind. They rely on something that has worked to get man this far without placing ideals blindly driven by emotion first; they have a sure line and they say, 'No.' That, in a sense, is something I find to be highly respectable.

Like the body craves oxygen, the mind is desperate for certainty. It believes that without a safe foothold on reality, it will die.But the fascinating thing is that the illusion of certainty is exactly the opposite of safety because it hardens and narrows the vision to make everything fit its own scope. Then when new information arrives which would be its ally, the mind pushes it away in favor of the leaky life raft to which it clings, sinking all the while beneath the waves of change.In fact, the only antidote for this is to embrace 'I don’t know' so deeply that a powerful, dynamic safety emerges. This is like learning to surf so well that a tsunami wave shows up as a challenge to test our mastery.

...the morning with the whole day waiting,full of promise,the nightof quiet, of no expectations, of rest.And the certainty of home, the one I live in,and the onethat lives in me.

People too often tolerate uncertainty prior to taking action; worse, some people believe that omniscience or infallibility are prerequisites for being certain, so they conclude that certainty (and therefore knowledge) is never possible. To any person who proclaims that "you can never be certain of anything", ask them: "are you sure?" and watch what happens.

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.

[Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing—one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.

My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers—even the answers they themselves believed. I don’t know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being “politically conscious”—as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty.

He who asserts belief with absolute certainty knows nothing of faith and makes himself into a fool. He who is wise, upon realizing they have done this, recants and searches themselves for further enlightenment.

Oh no. Maybe I'd gotten too cocky. I was still relatively new to this friend business. Had I screwed up even asking? Should I have waited for her to offer up details?

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

And I will wait for Jarod to work for me. For free, cause if it's paid, it's work and not love, unless, of course he loves to work, in which case he’ll surely love working for me, because I love people who love to do that to love to do that.

Things happen, and nothing is for sure, but you just have to keep going, believing that one day, you'll find something that is.

She had been too well-trained to allow her emotions to take control of her at the time, but the feelings were too strong to quietly recede into a regimen of critical thought. Deep inside her they stewed, logic and reason slowly boiling off. Reduced to their essence, her feelings became more potent, condensed into an emotional certainty. I should have saved them.

It's not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about.

My compulsive thoughts aren't even thoughts, they're absolute certainties and obeying them isn't a choice.

I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.

Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift.

Certainty is the most vivid condition of ignorance and the most necessarycondition for knowledge.

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is.

Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.

A half truth like half a brick is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

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.

It must be an odd person indeed that can say for certain they are normal.

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

Peaceful disputes are maintained when men sincerely believe that they are morally, logically correct about the issues at hand. It is when neither side is really certain that wars are instigated.

Miracles are like murders. After the first one, each becomes easier than the last for, with each success, the miracle-worker's certainty in himself becomes stronger.

All life is preoccupied with death. Death is the only certain future. Yet in the face of reason, everyone holds out hope for the highly improbable.

Because you're always learning, the chief lesson remains: you still know nothing.

I'll make a book on learning how to be a complete moron someday, and I'm sure no one will buy it, because everyone will have mastered that already by the time I gather enough moronism to process it into digestible upgrade instructions for your average village cyborg-idiot.

But at that moment she had known, with a certainty she would never feel about anything else in her life, that it was right, that she wanted this man in her life. Something inside her said, He understands. What it's like to be different.

No one knows for sure about the future. But if you feel reluctant to plan something about it, then someone with guts would define it for you.