False Certainty Quotes & Sayings

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. — John Stuart Mill

We don't live in a world that suffers from doubt, but one that suffers from certainty, false certainties that compensate for the well of worldly anxieties and worries. — Les Back

From whomsoever one hears anything, it is wisdom to understand the true import of it. — Thiruvalluvar

That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse! — Jesse Ball

In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the questions cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil. — David Hume

The unsaid rules every conversation. — Marty Rubin

Facts are certainly the solid and true foundation of all sectors of nature study ... Reasoning must never find itself contradicting definite facts; but reasoning must allow us to distinguish, among facts that have been reported, those that we can fully believe, those that are questionable, and those that are false. It will not allow us to lend faith to those that are directly contrary to others whose certainty is known to us; it will not allow us to accept as true those that fly in the face of unquestionable principles. — Rene Antoine Ferchault De Reaumur

Jealousy likes photos, that's why instagram is such a hit. — Parul Sehgal

If ever there was a season for constipation it was winter. — Anthony Marra

[For people] to refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. — John Stuart Mill

We've got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. Likewise, we've got to be of service first before we can expect money. Don't concern yourself with the money. Be of service. Build. Work. Dream. Create. Do this and you'll find that there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you. — Earl Nightingale

Other-cheekism is not only a way of purifying the soul, it is also part of every weak person's survival kit. — Quentin Crisp

Human beings often cling to their certainties for fear that their opinions will be proven false. But a certainty that cannot be called into question is not a certainty. Solid certainties are those that survive questioning. In order to accept questioning as the foundation for our voyage toward knowledge, we must be humble enough to accept that today's truth may become tomorrow's falsehood. — Carlo Rovelli

Moral certainty is certainty which is sufficient to regulate our behaviour, or which measures up to the certainty we have on matters relating to the conduct of life which we never normally doubt, though we know that it is possible, absolutely speaking, that they may be false. — Rene Descartes

She loved Bram in a clear-eyed way she'd never loved her ex-husband, no rose-colored glasses or mindless giddiness, no Cinderella fantasies or false certainty that he'd put her life in order. What she felt for Bram was messy, honest, and soul-deep. He felt like ... part of her, the best and the worst. Like someone she wanted to struggle through life with; share triumphs and catastrophes; share holidays, birthdays, every days — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

If you're a die-hard "foodie," hop off the road in DuBois and enjoy a Subway sandwich made at a place that is eighty percent gas station. — Tina Fey

And yet the idea is hard to accept, it's so hard to succeed in making something happen, even what's been decided on and planned out, not even the will of a god seems forceful enough to manage it, if our own will is made in its semblance. It may be, rather, that nothing is ever unmixed and the thirst for totality is never quenched, perhaps because it is a false yearning. Nothing is whole or of a single piece, everything is fractured and evenomed, veins of peace run through the body of war and hatred insinuates itself into love and compassion, there is truce amid the quagmire of bullets and a bullet amid the revelries, nothing can bear to be unique or prevail or be dominant and everything needs fissures and cracks, needs it negation at the same time as its existence. And nothing is known with certainty and everything is told figuratively. — Javier Marias

If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race. — Herbert Spencer

In all human transactions, the highest degree of assurance to which we can arrive, short of the evidence of our own senses, is that of probability. The most that can be asserted is, that the narrative is more likely to be true than false; and it may be in the highest degree more likely, but still be short of absolute mathematical certainty. Yet this very probability may be so great as to satisfy the mind of the most cautious, and enforce the assent of the most reluctant and unbelieving. If it is such as usually satisfies reasonable men, in matters of ordinary transaction, it is all which the greatest sceptic has a right to require; for it is by such evidence alone that our rights are determined, in the civil tribunals; and on no other evidence do they proceed, even in capital cases. — Simon Greenleaf

It's like they had a backlash the first 11 years. I think the reason why it always seems like there's a backlash is because when bands are unknown, they only get written about by fans. — Kim Deal

Mandela once told me that he lived on hatred when he went into prison because he was young and he was being abused and he was out there cracking those rocks all day and he said after about 11 years he realized that they'd already taken about everything they could take from him except his mind and his heart — Hillary Clinton

Seemingly every culture before our own has had a single acceptable way to raise a baby. These cultures wouldn't have cared about the new scientific findings: they already knew how babies worked. Their answers were all very different, mind you, but they had this in common: all the other answers were wrong.

Such confidence makes sense. If you have to raise a baby, not study a baby, you'd better settle on an answer, and as long as you have settled on an answer, you may as well be certain about it. Pretty much everyone has been very certain. But if everyone has been very certain, and everyone's certainty has been very different, you start to suspect that there aren't that many certainties after all. There's no one true path. Or put another way: the one true path is forked. — Nicholas Day

No one can know a false thing, one can only believe it with certainty until it is contradicted. (Page 7) — Orson Scott Card

I lost my job, well I didn't lose it, I know where it is, there's just some other guy doing it now. — Bobcat Goldthwait

Something has happened to me, I can't doubt it any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident. It came cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little put out, that's all. Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet, and I was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me, that it was a false alarm. And now, it's blossoming. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty. — Dan Simmons

God uses those who seem ill-fitted for a significant life. — Charles R. Swindoll

It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know. — Sam Harris