Uncertainty Is Certain Quotes & Sayings

That which caused the many failures I had in learning the bicycle had caused me failures in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for of judgment; a too vivid realization of the uncertainty of everything about me; an underlying doubt
at once, however (and this is all that saved me), matched and overcome by the determination not to give in to it. — Frances E. Willard

In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way. — George Leonard

I'm living in this world. I'm what, a slacker? A "twentysomething"? I'm in the margins. I'm not building a wall but making a brick. Okay, here I am, a tired inheritor of the Me generation, floating from school to street to bookstore to movie theater with a certain uncertainty. I'm in that white space where consumer terror meets irony and pessimism, where Scooby Doo and Dr. Faustus hold equal sway over the mind, where the Butthole Surfers provide the background volume, where we choose what is not obvious over what is easy. It goes on ... like TV channel-cruising, no plot, no tragic flaws, no resolution, just mastering the moment, pushing forward, full of sound and fury, full of life signifying everything on any given day ... — Richard Linklater

Uncertainty is fearful to the ego, which always wants to control reality, but from the viewpoint of detachment, a constantly shifting and changing universe must remain uncertain. If things were certain, there could be no creativity. Therefore spirit works through surprises and unexpected outcomes.
We achieve peace of mind only when we accept the wisdom of uncertainty. — Deepak Chopra

Luck is a favorable thing out of an uncertainty.
No such thing as luck when everything's certain. — Toba Beta

The only thing certain in times of great uncertainty is that people will behave with great strength or weakness, and with very little else in between. — Amy Tan

Death is certain. Life is always changing, like a puff of wind in the air, or a wave in the sea, or even a thought in the mind. — Ruth Ozeki

But this is not the faith that has given us religion. It would be rather remarkable if a positive attitude in the face of uncertainty led inevitably to ludicrous convictions about the divine origin of certain books, to bizarre cultural taboos, to the abject hatred of homosexuals, and to the diminished status of women. Adopt too positive an outlook, and the next thing you know architects and engineers may start flying planes into buildings. — Sam Harris

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed. — Carl Sagan

You cannot know" he said simply. "Very little is certain in this life, my lady. — Robin Maxwell

The truthfulness of 'The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism' is in doubt largely because of uncertainty about its authorship, and, as we have seen, a nearly identical ambiguity surrounds the Appendix. The parallel is significant. Two psychologically oriented critics, Murray Sperber and J. Brooks Bouson, have each pointed out strong resemblances between O'Brien's manipulation of Winston and Orwell's manipulation of the reader. I believe these resemblances extend to the book's handling of its two principal documents. Just as O'Brien plays upon Winston's desire for certain knowledge about Oceania's social and political structure, leading him on with the possibly spurious 'Goldstein' tract, so the story's narrator draws the truth-seeking reader into an Appendix whose truth value cannot be determined. — Richard K. Sanderson

It's ... well, it's a long story," he said, but the question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-tw0 ... "
"I'm afraid," he said at last,"that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can be known about the same Universe."
"Except," said Prak, struggling to sort a thought out, "if it happened, it seems the Question and the Answer would just cancel each other out, and take the Universe with them, which would be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. It is possible that this has already happened," he added with a weak smile, "but there is a certain amount of uncertainty about it. — Douglas Adams

Being a scientist requires having faith in uncertainty, finding pleasure in mystery, and learning to cultivate doubt. There is no surer way to screw up an experiment than to be certain of its outcome. — Stuart Firestein

Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists. — Robert Winston

There is nothing more certain and unchanging than uncertainty and change. — John F. Kennedy

Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences. — Bertrand Russell

In a syllogism (1. All men are mortal, 2. Socrates is a man, 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal), the generalization (all men are mortal) must have been arrived at by induction. No inductive process is ever absolutely certain. There is always the leap, the assumption, of generalizing and therefore one of the premises of a syllogism must have an element of uncertainty. So it cannot prove anything with certainty.

A syllogism is therefore a signpost pointing where to look for direct experience, but can inherently never give information that is 100% certain. But a syllogism (on metaphysical subjects) can also point to what can, inherently, never be experienced; then it is an anomaly. — Nanamoli Thera

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. — Criss Jami

Ideally, the pursuit of truth is said to be at the heart of the intellectual's business, but this credits his business too much and not quite enough. As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas consummation often turns out to be elusive. Truth captured loses its glamour; truths long known and widely believed have a way of turning false with time; easy truths are bore and too many of them become half truths. Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties. Harold Rosenberg summed up this side of the life of the mind supremely well when he said that the intellectual is one who turns answers into questions. — Richard Hofstadter

What I remember most is that the laws of physics no longer seemed to apply. Gravity was backwards and the world was, I'm quite certain, moving in slow motion. His pull wasn't a pull; I was just falling upward, and he caught me. There really was no beginning or end to the kiss; it wasn't even really there- and because of that, it was tremendous. Our lips were just four sweet, shy people meeting, saying, "Hello, it's nice to meet you." But what passed between them was massive. Nuclear. And in an instant, every cobweb inside me was obliterated. My inner struggles, my uncertainty, my fear of tiger attack ... gone. Just the feeling of being a newborn, a pure soul just waiting to be imprinted upon. — James Patterson

An all encompassing uncertainty on the part of any person is either a sign of utter stupidity or extreme intelligence. Only the not so dumb, or the not so smart, are ever certain about anything. — Derek R. Audette

Because God is trustworthy, you need not let worry steal your joy for one more day. With God as your leader, even when confusion is at its peak, there can always be a certainty in your uncertainty. To be certain of God's character and His goodness to us means that we can look uncertainty in the eye and even flourish in it. Worry can be transformed into excited anticipation of what is to come." (Life Hacks, p.35) — Jon Morrison

Uncertainty is a temptress. We may try our best to avoid her. But what is certain is that at some point of time, she will find us. The only question that remains is whether like Medusa, she will paralyze you, or whether like one of the nine muses of ancient Greece, she will drive you to greater things. — Richie Singh

The road is not certain, and the end of the journey cannot be seen. — John Speed

Nothing is certain by uncertainty. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

If we can somehow control the probability of certain improbable events, then anything, including faster-than-light travel, and even time travel, is possible. Reaching the distant stars in seconds is highly unlikely, but when one can control quantum probabilities at will, then even the impossible may become commonplace. — Michio Kaku

The only certainty is uncertainty, except your own death, that's damn certain. — Rick Yancey

They're similar, Cara and Tris, two women sharpened by loss. The difference is that Cara's pain has made her certain of everything, and Tris has guarded her uncertainty, protected it, despite all she's been through. She still approaches everything with a question instead of an answer. It is something I admire about her - something I should probably admire more. For — Veronica Roth

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles! — Blaise Pascal

The great trouble with religion - any religion - is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence.
One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason - but one cannot have both. — Robert A. Heinlein

"Uncertainty" is NOT "I don't know." It is "I can't know." "I am uncertain" does not mean "I could be certain." — Werner Heisenberg

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.
(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.) — Blaise Pascal

In practice, some come to see easily, some with difficulty. But whatever the case, never mind. Difficult or easy, the Buddha said not to be heedless. Just that
don't be heedless. Why? Because life is not certain. Wherever we start to think that things are certain, uncertainty is lurking right there. Heedlessness is just holding things as certain. It is grasping at certainty where there is no certainty and looking for truth in things that are not true. Be careful! They are likely to bite you sometime in the future! — Ajahn Chah

When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty. — Charles Horton Cooley

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them. — Sogyal Rinpoche

We need to step into certain uncertainty. Without faith it is impossible to please God. — Craig Groeschel

One the grand paradoxes of existence and nonexistence is the uncertainty of uncertainty. Even uncertainty can be uncertain. However, can you be certain of such uncertainty? — Lionel Suggs

The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty. — Oswald Chambers

The future is certain. It is just not known. — Johnny Rich

One thing, however, is certain in life. No one survives it. — Johnny Rich

We poets don't tend to be certain a lot. Much of our art is made out of our own uncertainty. And there is a not-knowingness, I think, that leads us back to suffering humanity with a more compassionate vision than most of our politicians have. — Sam Hamill

Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing ... Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation. — Oswald Chambers

Life is. I am. Anything might happen. And I believe I may invest my life with meaning. The uncertainty is a blessing in disguise. If I were absolutely certain about all things, I would spend my life in anxious misery, fearful of losing my way. But since everything and anything are always possible, the miraculous is always nearby and wonders shall never, ever cease. — Robert Fulghum

The great uncertainty of all data in war is because all action, to a certain extent, planned in a mere twilight - like the effect of a fog - gives things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance. — Carl Von Clausewitz

When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of uncertainty-some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. — Richard P. Feynman

That economic decisions are made without certain knowledge of the consequences is pretty self-evident. But, although many economists were aware of this elementary fact, there was no systematic analysis of economic uncertainty until about 1950. — Kenneth Arrow

...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. — Harry Haskell

My Heart fell.
Since I could remember my heart has balanced
A long such a thin line of right and wrong, love and hate.
The line already stretched to the extremes, taught with fear and uncertainty
Tension reached its maximum
When that day came around
Ever since that day when learned the truth
The day my eyes were forcefully
peeled open by dull razors
That day the line faded and the tight rope snapped.
With no line to follow my heart fell.
Now concussed, delirious and confused.
My heart wanders between worlds.
Never certain of who it is
where it was, or how it should be. — Kevin Rose

I feel lost and confused, but happy and certain. I am like a ball of tangled yarn. The parts that are untangled are available, useable; the rest is a mess, useless until it is untied. That mess feels endless and at most times unyielding. — Astrid Lee Miles

I am
asking myself what is fear not what I am afraid of.
I lead a certain kind of life; I think in a certain pattern; I have
certain beliefs and dogmas and I don't want those patterns of
existence to be disturbed because I have my roots in them. I don't
want them to be disturbed because the disturbance produces a state
of unknowing and I dislike that. If I am torn away from everything
I know and believe, I want to be reasonably certain of the state of
things to which I am going. So the brain cells have created a
pattern and those brain cells refuse to create another pattern which
may be uncertain. The movement from certainty to uncertainty is
what I call fear. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Yet, the principle of uncertainty is a bad name. In science or outside of it, we are not uncertain. Our knowledge is merely confined within a certain tolerance. We should call it the principle of tolerance. First in the engineering sense. Science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance. But I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge, all information, between human beings, can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance, and that's whether it's in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of though that aspires to dogma. — Jacob Bronowski