Top 1200 Doubt And Certainty Quotes & Sayings

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

both doubt and certainty are as contagious as the common cold

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

Guilt can make you doubt yourself at the very moment when you need to proceed with certainty.

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.

... 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.

There are many different kinds of doubt. When we doubt the future, we call it worry. When doubt other people we call is suspicion. When we doubt ourselves we call it inferiority. When we doubt God we call it unbelief. When we doubt what we hear on television we call it intelligence! When we doubt everything we call it cynicism or skepticism.

Living with doubt ... is almost always more profitable than living with certainty. People don't like doubt, so they pay money and give up opportunities to avoid it. Entrepreneurshi p is largely about living with doubt. If you need reassurance, you're giving up quite a bit to get it. On the other hand, if you can get in the habit of seeking out uncertainty, you'll have developed a great instinct.

The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.

You were my hope during my days of loneliness, my anxiety during moments of doubt, my certainty during moments of faith.

The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.

People have a need for certainty - and that need for certainty is in every human being, certainty that you can avoid pain, certainty that you can at least be comfortable. It's a survival instinct.

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

Doubt is long-winded. Certainty is brief.

If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don't abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.

Doubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things... It doesn't frighten me.

Not doubt, certainty is what drives one insane.

Doubt is nothing but a trivial agitation on the surface of the soul, while deep down there is a calm certainty.

Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.

We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.

Doubt is important because it suggests progress. Total certainty can mean there's no assessment of things. Doubt, if you don't panic, can allow newness to come in and challenge something that's an established mode.

I would say that without any doubt he's the killer - the law says beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty which I - there's no question that he was the killer of President Kennedy.

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.

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

I have moved from certainty to doubt, from devotion to rebellion.

I imagine God to be like my father. My father was always the voice of certainty in my life. Certainty in the wisdom, certainty in the path, certainty always in God. For me God is certainty in everything. Certainty that everything is good and everything is God.

People are looking for certainty. The more complex the world becomes, the more people look for people to give them certainty and tell them what to do. During the past few years of actively thinking about this, there is one thing that I have accepted: certainty is not out there. There is not one strategy to follow, and that's OK.

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

[I]f in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics, in so far as disposed through it we are able to reach certainty in other sciences and truth by the exclusion of error.

Knowledge breeds doubt, not certainty, And the more we know the more uncertain we become.

We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty.

The other guys are selling certainty. Not me. I'm on the corner with doubt.

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

In their leaders, advisers, and experts, people much prefer overconfidence, total certainty, to any kind of doubt.

All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.

When prayer removes distrust and doubt and enters the field of mental certainty, it becomes faith; and the universe is built on faith.

There has to be certainty and there has to be clarity. There can't be ambiguity, .. This has to be certain, clear in all respects from all the parties so nobody is in any doubt about what the future holds.

Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.

Certainty is the mother of repose, and therefore the common law aims at certainty.

Every increase in your knowledge is a simultaneous decrease. You learn and you unlearn at the same time. A new certainty is a new doubt as well.

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

There's one thing that always interests me about you good people, not your certainty that the rest of us are swine, - no doubt we are, - but your certainty that your opinions are pearls.

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.

What is certainty but the refuge of those whose faith is not strong enough to entertain doubt.

I think that certainty is a closed door, It's the end of the conversation. Doubt is an open door.

A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.

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

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

Like belief, doubt takes a lot of different forms, from ancient Skepticism to modern scientific empiricism, from doubt in many gods to doubt in one God, to doubt that recreates and enlivens faith and doubt that is really disbelief.

Scientists do not believe in fundamental and absolute certainties. For the scientist, certainty is never an end, but a search; not the ordering of certainty, but its exploration. For the scientist, certainty represents the highest degree of probability.

Certainty is a closing of the mind. To create something new you must have doubt.

Of course I doubt. I do not practice a certainty. I practice a faith.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and 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.

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.

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

Doubt is not a very agreeable status, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

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 certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.