Top 1200 Certainty Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty.

Certainty is a cruel mindset.

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect

The only certainty is death.

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.

The risk of failure is a very personal thing. One of the quotes I like, I think this came from the famous basketball coach from California - John Wooden - is that, "Successful people - winners - do everything necessary to prepare to win, without the certainty of winning." Everybody would do everything necessary to prepare to win if winning was a certainty. So you're willing to put yourself out publicly and privately and say, "I'm going to do this."

Not doubt, certainty is what drives one insane.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

Certainty in politics is never a given.

Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

Out of the element of participation follows the certainty of faith; out of the element of separation follows the doubt in faith. And each is essential for the nature of faith. Sometimes certainty conquers doubt, but it cannot eliminate doubt. The conquered of today may become the conqueror of tomorrow. Sometimes doubt conquers faith, but it still contains faith. Otherwise it would be indifference.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

To be human : to strive in the face of the certainty of failure.

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.

There is no certainty; there is only adventure.

Moral certainty is intellectual immorality

The lack of faith is not doubt. It is certainty.

I don't have Gandalf the White's certainty about everything.

I have no talent for certainty.

In the absence of certainty, instinct is all you can follow.

What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.

The only difference between causation and the value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference. In classical science it was supposed that the world always works in terms of absolute certainty and that "cause" is the more appropriate word to describe it. But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences.

Those who say they dislike dogma, or 'certainty', tend to be liars, hypocrites, or simply wrong. What they really dislike is the dogma of those they disagree with. A society that was certain, certain beyond all certainty, that putting its citizens in death camps was wrong, would never put people in death camps. Such things are only possible when you're open to new ideas.

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!

While the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless ...; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying 'I know this', we ought to say 'I more or less know something more or less like this'. ... Knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic.

Change is the investor's only certainty.

Certainty is the enemy of change.

There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea--that idea which the church has never ceased to embody--I AM!

Certainty a strange Ferris wheel of a statement!

No one can forecast the economy with certainty.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

The world is certainty a sudden place.

Certitude is not the test of certainty.

Certainty, not data, is knowledge.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

If you're invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.

A reasonable probability is the only certainty.

To believe with certainty, we must begin with doubting.

The only things of certainty are Death and Taxes.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty.

Climate Change is a national security issue. We found that climate instability will lead to instability in geopolitics and impact American military operations around the world. People are saying they want to be perfectly convinced about climate science projections. But speaking as a soldier, we never have 100 percent certainty. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield.

I suppose I like certainty as much as anyone else, but I also feel that the hidden costs are high, that we pay a heavy price for our convictions. This is a human issue as well as a writing issue - at least in the personal essay as I practice it. Any real essayist knows that certainty is an editorial decision, arrived at not through conviction but through suppression, the denial of a whole range of possibilities, of alternatives that we jettison, sometimes necessarily, in order to steady the ship.

You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.

Certainty is usually a sign of pathology.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty.

Certainty becomes you.

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

Such sober certainty of waking bliss.

The only certainty is uncertainty

What I need most of all is certainty.

The only certainty life contains is death.

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

What can we say with certainty?

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.

Certainty ends inquiry.

Digital television is no longer a probability, it is a certainty.