Quotes & Sayings About Unknowns

There are known knowns and known unknowns, but what we should be worried about most is the unknown unknowns. — Gary Marcus

When I got diagnosed, the more research I did about it - MS overall, as a subject, as a disease - there's a lot of misconceptions and there's a lot of unknowns about it, and there wasn't anyone out that was close to my age or close to anything like me out there. — Jack Osbourne

Man's wobbly little mind isn't equipped for hauling around the great unknowns.
Very few people realize, there's no point chasing after answers to life's important questions. They all have fickle, highly whimsical minds of their own.
Nevertheless. If you're patient, if you don't rush them, when they're ready, they'll smash into you. And don't be surprised if afterward you're speechless and there are cartoon Tweety Birds chirping around your head. — Marisha Pessl

Life is one big enigma. If you got to the bottom of it before the end of your lifetime, the rest of your life wouldn't be worth living, now would it? Where's the excitement in an existence with all the unknowns known? — Elle Casey

When you start talking about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns, you're thrown into a crazy meta-level discussion. Do I know what I know, do I know what I don't know, do I know what I don't know I don't know. It becomes a strange, Lewis Carroll - like nursery rhyme. — Errol Morris

As long as Nature's actions in the animate and inanimate world fill us with wonder and offer an unmatched example for us, a realm of solutions that exceeds in its perfection and complexity everything we can achieve ourselves, the number of unknowns will be bigger than our knowledge. It is only when we are eventually able to compete with Nature on the level of creation, when we have learned to copy it so that we can discover all of its limitations as a Designer, that we shall enter the realm of freedom, of being able to work out a creative strategy subordinated to our goals. — Stanislaw Lem

There are so many unknowns, and so many possibilities. Sometimes there are things you can say, and talking makes it better. But sometimes, there are no words. — E. Katherine Kottaras

There is no greater mystery than a love interest when you first met them - so much to learn and so many unknowns. What's her favorite food? What's she into? All the things that would eventually be made known in a relationship. — David Bowick

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. — Katie Kiesler

Birth and death; we all move between these two unknowns. — Bryant H. McGill

I think every year brings unknowns that you have to deal with and handle, confront and embrace. — Bjork

There are two unknowns in the World. The Poles and the Turks! — Albert Sorel

There are too many unknowns in life to say you know what's going to happen. — Karen White

For a found-footage-style movie, there's a definite advantage in using unknowns, because it helps sell the illusion that it's real. A known actor would get in the way of the suspension of disbelief. — Oren Peli

There are endless unknowns, and no forecast of a century can be either complete or utterly correct. — George Friedman

Love chooses to believe the best about people. It gives them the benefit of the doubt. It refuses to fill in the unknowns with negative assumptions. And when our worst hopes are proven to be true, love makes every effort to deal with them and move forward. As much as possible, love focuses on the positive. — Stephen Kendrick

I'm not saying you shouldn't pursue dreams and goals. Just don't forsake the present for the unknowns of the future. A lot of happiness is bypassed, overlooked, postponed to a time years from now that may never come. Don't bide your time and miss out on this moment for a tomorrow with no guarantee. — Kim Holden

It makes me self-conscious. It's because I'm known, in the limelight, that it's getting all the gravy, but if you knew, if you saw some of the people who make it possible for UNICEF to help these children survive. These are the people who do the jobs-the unknowns, whose names you will never know ... I at least get a dollar a year, but they don't. — Audrey Hepburn

While the rest of the body is covered, the face is naked. The vulnerability of this nakedness issues a profound call for understanding and compassion. The human face is a meeting place of two unknowns: the infinity of the outer world and the unchartered, inner world to which each individual alone has access. This is the night world that lies behind the brightness of the visage. The smile on a face is a surprise or illumination. It is as if the inner night of this hidden world brightens suddenly, when the smile crosses the face. Heidegger — John O'Donohue

A lot of scientists on Earth think of things that they could do in zero g. Things like the way metals cure, for example, and the way fluids react in space can tell us a lot about some of the unknowns we have on Earth. — Kevin A. Ford

Of course there are unknowns. And the sooner Aurore begins to meet them, the sooner they will cease to be unknown. That is the point. — Cameron Dokey

Ken appeared, was taller than she, wanted her, was acceptable and accepted on all sides; similarly, nagging mathematical problems abruptly crack open. Foxy could find no fault with him, and this challenged her, touched off her stubborn defiant streak. She felt between his handsomeness and intelligence a contradiction that might develop into the convoluted humour of her Jew. Ken looked lika a rich boy and worked like a poor one. From Farmington, he was the only son of a Hartford laywer who never lost a case. Foxy came to imagine his birth as cool and painless, without a tear or outcry. Nothing puzzled him. There were unknowns, but no mysteries. ( ... ) He was better-looking, better-thinking, a better machine. — John Updike

Somewhere on earth there is a door reserved for each soul, and one day each of us will walk through that door never to return to this life again. Where that door is and when we will walk through it are unknowns we must live with and prepare for. Upon death, all of this
this whole world and all of its charms and occupations
will become as if it were all a dream. — Hamza Yusuf

Isn't the easiest thing at this point to start living in a guarded, safe, controlled way? To sop taking risks and to be ruled by our fears of what could happen? Turning inward is one way to respond; the other is to acknowledge our lack of control and reach out for God's help. IF life were stable, I'd never need God's help. Since it's not, I reach out for Him regularly. I am thankful for the unknowns and that I don't have control because it makes me run to God. — Francis Chan

Mobile didn't create more unknowns for web designers. It just forced us to recognize the unknowns that were already there. — Jeremy Keith

I do not need the Lord to heal me. What I need is the faith to trust him no matter what happens. In this, I have begun to realize that great faith is borne in the great unknowns of life. — Kasey Van Norman

An equation commonly contains one or more so-called unknowns, often represented by x, y, z, etc. — Stieg Larsson

A soulmate is not someone who shares your interests and is attractive to you. A soulmate is someone who is willing to grow with you, who chooses to be with you until the end, and will love you through good and bad. It's not about sunshine and laughter, it's about mundane moments filled with unknowns. Love is so much more than a spark you have, or passions shared, it's working for something deeper and lasting. I think that at the end of all things, we'll see what really matters, and I think the things we produced with love and grace will be what we have to show. So love with purpose, love beyond yourself, and love knowing that what you are growing is beautiful and good. — T.B. LaBerge

Words have meaning beyond the obvious. Words have consequences beyond intentions. Civil words align risk and reward of such unknowns. — John R. Dallas Jr.

Many of the big changes of the next 25 years will come from unknowns working in their bedrooms and garages... — Charles W. Leadbeater

In sailing, in weather, in life and death, answers are not endings and questions are not to be feared. The unknowns keep us moving forward. — Kaci Cronkhite

I've spent many long hours thinking about the bits and pieces of things; the complexity of human interaction; personalities and emotions; temperaments; the knowns, the unknowns, and intangibles involved in two people coming together, and I've come to the conclusion that it's a small miracle any two people can put it all together and actually find love with each other. — Margaret Lesh

Pain is inevitable but so is joy. Too many of us resort to abject fear or anger due to our sufferings or unknowns in life. Remain steadfast by approaching discovery and love so you can embrace the present moment. The past can serve as nothing more than a lesson and the future can serve as nothing more than a notion. — Adam Starks

The Party claimed, for example, that today 40 per cent of adult proles were literate: before the Revolution, it was said, the number had only been 15 per cent. The Party claimed that the infant mortality rate was now only 160 per thousand, whereas before the Revolution it had been 300 - and so it went on. It was like a single equation with two unknowns. — George Orwell

The idea that you can cross a dimension, or commune with the dead, or life on other planets ... these are the great unknowns. They will be debated as long as their is life. I think there's an inherent interest from people in what that stuff is. — James Roday

I worry hope will crush me, the way love has so many times before.
Are they so different, hope and love? O & E in the same place, half of the other in each word.
Both swimming in unknowns.
I've been through the big changes. These ones should seem easier in comparison, I should be more prepared, but they don't and I'm not.
Sometimes I feel like a broken-wing butterfly, clinging to a window screen.
Afraid to let go. Afraid to stay.
Wondering how much wing is enough to fly. — Erin Morgenstern

Whatever your fears, whatever the unknowns or the challenges in your life, God has promised to provide for you, to share His pleasure with you, to protect you, and to give you His enduring presence. — Nancy Leigh Leigh DeMoss

Just don't forsake the present for the unknowns of the future. — Kim Holden

From the dawn of history, science has probed the universe of unknowns, searching for the uniting laws of nature. — Ahmed Zewail

The ground shifted again into an ocean of unknowns, a dark current yanking at a fundamental law she'd forgotten: there was no truth without a lie. — Emma Raveling

Surely the heart is not a fitting place to house hatred. But where is its place? I don't know. That is one of the universe's Unknowns. It would seem that the God's truly delight in messing things up, for in not having created a particular spot to house hatred, they have provoked eternal chaos. Hatred us forever hunting down a refuge, poking it's nose where it shouldn't, taking over sites reserved for others, invariably forcing out love. — Laura Esquivel

All unknowns, at first, at least, to me, until I, like Columbus, "discovered" them. Is voyeurism a form of imperialism? — Ann Rower

There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know. — Donald Rumsfeld

Link Wray and Gene Vincent ... two of the greatest unknowns of rock 'n' roll. — John Lennon

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns- the ones we don't know we don't know. — Donald Rumsfeld

Some of the biggest challenges faced by computers and human minds alike: how to manage finite space, finite time, limited attention, unknown unknowns, incomplete information, and an unforeseeable future; how to do so with grace and confidence; and how to do so in a community with others who are all simultaneously trying to do the same. — Brian Christian

[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality ... a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns. — Robert Hayden

The unknowns wasn't full of terrors, it was full of undiscovered advantages. Better to run toward something than from something. — Rachel Caine

Since September,
I sat one seat behind Anna in algebra.
Passed papers to her every day.
Studied for tons of tests together.
Though it often seemed impossible,
Eventually,
We always found the unknown for X.
But not this time.
This equation
Bounces against my brain.
And sneers at all attempted answers.
I know I'll re-examine the variables,
And reanalyze the unknowns, maybe forever.
But
It won't matter.
Because, Anna-
I know I'll never figure out Y.
Y you didn't want to live-
And Y I never noticed. — Terri Fields

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. — Donald Rumsfeld

We know there are certain types of viruses that are nasty - influenza, for instance, is an area that is not a blindside. But a lot of viruses have come out of nowhere, like H.I.V., or to a certain extent SARS. Because we know we have the potential to be blindsided, we really have to investigate the unknowns. — Nathan Wolfe

It takes a village to build success in publishing a book - it takes friends that are willing to help - it takes hours upon hours of no's to get to a yes, it takes many twists and turns with seemingly no end to the detours, it takes courage to face the unknowns - it takes and it takes and it takes - But then, like a flower opening its blossom - it gives ... — Rich Okun

We want progress in medicine to be clear and unequivocal, but of course it rarely is. Every new treatment has gaping unknowns - for both patients and society - and it can be hard to decide what do do about them. — Atul Gawande

Too many forms of life - Too many unknowns - How couldn't you go crazy faced with such a magnitude? — Fabio F. Centamore

The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks. (65) — Stephen Batchelor

Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us, ZORAC announced after a short pause. The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious. — James P. Hogan

Always, just beyond all these things, was the silver sea, the lace border around all land like the silence around sounds or the unknowns beyond all knowledge. — Rebecca Solnit

In mathematics, in place of characters, you have variables or unknowns. If I'm trying to plot a theorem, I try to imagine these variables interacting with each other. The boundary of their interaction is the theorem. — Manil Suri

A sense of the unknown has always lured mankind and the greatest of the unknowns of today is outer space. The terrors, the joys and the sense of accomplishment are epitomized in the space program. — William Shatner

There's always the risk that there are unknown unknowns. — Nate Silver

Life involves a lot of unknowns. — S.L. Wallace

a world of known risk, in short, risk (Figure 2-3, center). I use this term for a world where all alternatives, consequences, and probabilities are known. Lotteries and games of chance are examples. Most of the time, however, we live in a changing world where some of these are unknown: where we face unknown risks, or uncertainty (Figure 2-3, right). The world of uncertainty is huge compared to that of risk. Whom to marry? Whom to trust? What to do with the rest of one's life? In an uncertain world, it is impossible to determine the optimal course of action by calculating the exact risks. We have to deal with "unknown unknowns." Surprises happen. Even when calculation does not provide a clear answer, however, we have to make decisions. — Gerd Gigerenzer

Another thing he told his customers was that one of the great accounting unknowns of the modern age was how to value knowledge. It was an exciting field. — Jane Smiley

unknowns - all the things that transcended understanding, the miracles that pervaded individual lives and stretched back to a majesty spoken into existence, to a sacrifice that continued to resonate within our souls thousands of years later. A sacrifice based on adoption: he chose us, he loved us, then he died for the worst within us. — Sibella Giorello

The object of storytelling, like the object of magic, is not to explain or to resolve, but rather to create and to perform miracles of the imagination. To extend the boundaries of the mysterious. To push into the unknown in pursuit of still other unknowns. To reach into one's heart, down into that place where the stories are, bringing up the mystery of oneself. — Tim O'Brien

Life is a walk through the forest. Don't fear the trees, fear what lurks behind them. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I have found there are real objects under in intelligent control being seen on the ground and in our skies worldwire. The unknowns have varied over the decades from 22 percent in my own civilian files, 30 percent in the University of Colorda Condon Committee scientific studies, to at least 40 percent recently revised found in the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book military investigations. This is not acceptable, no matter who is doing the investigations. — George Fawcett

The interesting thing about Bettie Page that I discovered was to leave the mystery. She always retained a little mystery. Let there be some unknowns. — Gretchen Mol

They ought not to have let things come to this," he said, but he was never very clear even to himself who or why "They" were nor what "This" was. Some person or persons unknown was to blame. He hated these unknowns in general. But he was unable to focus his hatred into hating some responsible person or persons in particular. If only he could find who it was had neglected to do something, or had done something wrong or messed about with things, they would catch it. He'd get even with them somehow. — H.G.Wells

What I'm trying to say is this: there are things in this world that are better left as unknowns — Haruki Murakami

It's the last frontier to conquer, other people, strangers, the jungle of their arms and legs, hair and skin, the smells and moans that is everybody you haven't done. The great unknowns. The last forest to devastate. Here's everything you've only imagined. — Chuck Palahniuk

many unknowns, and more than any of his other jobs, this one held a high risk of failure. No, he wouldn't — Catherine Coulter

But, surprise - none of these blockbuster events made the slightest dent in Ben Graham's investment principles. Nor did they render unsound the negotiated purchases of fine businesses at sensible prices. Imagine the cost to us, then, if we had let a fear of unknowns cause us to defer or alter the deployment of capital. Indeed, we have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist. — Warren Buffett

There are many unknowns in life. This is patently clear again and again when we face vocational transitions. We cannot see around the bend in the road. We make decisions about our lives with implications for the lives of those we love and those for whom we have some responsibilities, and there are so many unknown variables. But there is one key variable that can be a known factor in our lives: The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. (Ps 121:8) On this we can depend. It will be the same now and for each transition of our lives. If we believe this, it will be evident because fear will no longer co-opt our lives. — Gordon T. Smith

There are things we know we know. . . . We know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know. - Donald Rumsfeld — Steven J. Wangsness

The glamour's off. Almost any question you ask can be answered. It's only the questions that you didn't know to ask that remain, dancing the can-can behind your back. The unknown unknowns. — Mark Forsyth

A point contains more unknowns than anything else; it need but stir, move, and it may turn into thousands of curves, thousands of bodies. I — Yevgeny Zamyatin

The two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet. — Mark Twain

The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often talked about: we computer experts barely know what we're doing. We're good at fussing and figuring out. We function well in a sea of unknowns. Our experience has only prepared us to deal with confusion. A programmer who denies this is probably lying, or else is densely unaware of himself. — Ellen Ullman

For everything that's known about Lyme disease, there are still an extraordinary number of unknowns in some fairly fundamental areas. — Vanessa Farnsworth

It was a relief to inhabit someone else's life for a while, to get her personal issues for a brief respite. In a play, she knew exactly how all her character's problems would be resolved. No matter how the cast performed, the end turned out the same. No questions, no worries, no unknowns. — Alexandra Robbins

You can learn to find unknowns in equations, draw equidistant lines and demonstrate theorems, but in real life there's nothing to position, calculate, or guess. — Delphine De Vigan

I was interested in big unknowns, and the brain is one of the biggest, so building tools that allow us to regard the brain as a big electrical circuit appealed to me. — Edward Boyden

I thought that I must always search for the remarkable combinations, add unknowns, mix things that were clearly marked with things beyond marking. I would leave the simulated test and enter into forbidden territory. I would look for that moment when I would begin to pour alone and in wonder. I would always try to seize that moment and to accept its challenge. I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing faith and a belief in astonishment. And if by accident, I could make a volcano in a single test tube, then what could I do with all the strange magnificent elements of the world with its infinity of unknowns, with the swarm of man, with civilization, with language? — Pat Conroy

Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain. No attention should be paid to the fact that algebra and geometry are different in appearance. Algebras (jabbre and maqabeleh) are geometric facts which are proved by propositions five and six of Book two of Elements. — Omar Khayyam

It was all about release, about letting go of the unknowns.
I was having a disabled child and that was that. There were no hidden truths to discover. I would not know anything about her birth, her survivability odds, all her ailments, until her life actually unfolded. — Ariana Carruth

What people dont know about you people create. Imagination is a part of being human. They fill in the unknowns with assumptions and not facts. Every man and woman is a mystery unrevealed. — R.M. Engelhardt

It is precisely because the unknowns are so great and dangerous that we require some manner of faith to choose our path and to give us courage. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Tinkering is a way of understanding difficult problems, of wrapping our heads around them and quantifying the unknowns. — Gever Tulley

Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. — Tim O'Brien

I'm interested in the murky areas where there are no clear answers - or sometimes multiple answers. It's here that I try to imagine patterns or codes to make sense of the unknowns that keep us up at night. I'm also interested in the invisible space between people in communication; the space guided by translation and misinterpretation. — Taryn Simon

I am looking for unknowns who are passionate and mission-based. But I don't try to tout the next great thing I want to get in front of, because I don't set that course. The entrepreneurs do that. — Jim Goetz

Film is much more of a brand business, whereas on Broadway, you can do complete unknowns and have hits. — Kevin McCollum