Certainty Quotes

What men want is not knowledge but certainty.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

Erich Fromm

There are no facts only interpretations.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Statistics are no substitute for judgement.

Henry Clay

Get your facts first and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.

Mark Twain

A half truth like half a brick is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.

Stephen Leacock

You are all you will ever have for certain .

June Havoc

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is.

Voltaire

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

Stanislaus

Modest doubt is call'd The beacon of the wise.

William Shakespeare

What men want is not knowledge but certainty.

Bertrand Russell

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

Erich Fromm

There are no facts only interpretations.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Statistics are no substitute for judgement.

Henry Clay

Get your facts first and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.

Mark Twain

A half truth like half a brick is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.

Stephen Leacock

You are all you will ever have for certain .

June Havoc

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is.

Voltaire

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

Stanislaus

Modest doubt is call'd The beacon of the wise.

William Shakespeare

Insurance companies sell what might happen tomorrow. Historians sell what certainly happened yesterday.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A sensible man may fear certain possibilities, but don’t let fear turn possibility into certainty.

Mark Lawrence

In the Congress of the United States, Cromwell had known a good many men who were possessed of absolute certainty, and this he feared so much that he felt the only real and enduring evil on the face of the earth was unbending certainty, unshakable orthodoxy.

Howard Fast

Perhaps, it is better to be decided than undecided. But it is certainly the best to stay decidedly undecided.

Raheel Farooq

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.

H.L. Mencken

To build refuges of my own making is to construct fortresses of sand at ocean’s edge, where the relentless tides of time will leave my most magnificently constructed walls as perfectly flat sand. And now that I am subject to the very tides that destroyed these walls of mine, I am left with the reality that my single and sole refuge can only be the God who created both tides and sand.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Sometimes a woman is afraid to be without security or without certainty, for even a short time. She has more excuses than dogs have hairs. She must just simply dive in and stand not knowing what will happen next.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

In order for a god to be all-knowing, he must know even the fact of his own omniscience. But can he do this? He may know the totality of facts constituting the world; call this Y. But in order to know that he has mastered Y, he must also know that 'There are no facts unknown to me' — and this is beyond Y.It seems impossible that a god (or anyone) could ever be sure that nothing exists beyond his ken. It makes no sense to imagine [a god] arriving at this limit, peering beyond it (at what?), and satisfying himself no further facts exist. But without this certainty he cannot be sure of his own omniscience, and so does not know everything.A theist might argue that his god has created all the facts in existence. But an omniscient god would have to be sure of even this — that he is the sole creator, and that there are no facts unknown to him. And how could he come to this knowledge?

Roland Puccetti

What kind of husband would I be if I bet against my own marriage?'I smiled. 'The stupid kind. Didn't you listen to your dad when he told you not to bet against me?

Jamie McGuire

I'm a girl."When Deryn opened her eyes, the lady boffin was staring at her with no change of expression. "Indeed," she

Scott Westerfeld

I know with unqualified certainty that I want to die. But I also know with equivalent certainty that I won't do anything about it. That I will only remain here and wait for death to indulge me.

Sara Baume

Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions? Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

Alan Lightman

...the morning with the whole day waiting,full of promise,the nightof quiet, of no expectations, of rest.And the certainty of home, the one I live in,and the onethat lives in me.

Karen Hesse

Others may not understand your joy and contentment because of your certainty about who you are and why you exist. Don't waste your time to explain.

Assegid Habtewold

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

Toba Beta

Miracles are like murders. After the first one, each becomes easier than the last for, with each success, the miracle-worker's certainty in himself becomes stronger.

Karen Maitland

Anyone who takes a decided line in certain matters, is sure to lead all the rest.

Thomas Hughes

I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.

J.K. Rowling

He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way.

J.K. Rowling

I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.

S.J. Watson

I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.

Andreas Vesalius

Always doubtful is the one who always looks for certainty.

Raheel Farooq

Whatever doubt might rise, he knew that he was right. But the rightness was an intellectual rightness and the doubt emotional.

Clifford D. Simak

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.

Saul D. Alinsky

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur.

Edward O. Sisson

I remember laughing at that moment, and I remember my son frowning at me in puzzlement. What I remember best of all, though, was the sudden certainty that the gods were with me, that they would fight for me, that my sword would be their sword. ‘We’re going to win,’ I told my son. I felt as if Odin or Thor had touched me. I had never felt more alive and never felt more certain. I knew there would be no more mistakes and that this was no dream.I had come to Bebbanburg and Bebbanburg would be mine.

Bernard Cornwell

Make an enemy of certainty and befriend doubt. When you can change your mind, you can change anything.

Kevin Ashton

Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift.

Milan Kundera

And I will wait for Jarod to work for me. For free, cause if it's paid, it's work and not love, unless, of course he loves to work, in which case he’ll surely love working for me, because I love people who love to do that to love to do that.

Will Advise

My compulsive thoughts aren't even thoughts, they're absolute certainties and obeying them isn't a choice.

Paul Rudnick

Only by digging deep down to the core of our true self can we come to a place of inner certainty. Our underlying values and priorities are our personal navigational stars on life's journey—essential tools to chart a life course that embraces what matters most to us.

Marian Deegan

In the presence of Esch, values have hidden their faces. Order, loyalty, sacrifice—he cherishes all these words, but exactly what do they represent? Sacrifice for what? Demand what sort of order? He doesn't know.If a value has lost its concrete content, what is left of it? A mere empty form; an imperative that goes unheeded and, all the more furious, demands to be heard and obeyed. The less Esch knows what he wants, the more furiously he wants it. Esch: the fanaticism of the era with no God. Because all values have hidden their faces, anything can be considered a value. Justice, order—Esch seeks them now in the trade union struggle, then in religion; today in police power, tomorrow in the mirage of America, where he dreams of emigrating. He could be a terrorist or a repentant terrorist turning in his comrades, or a party militant or a cult member a kamikaze prepared to sacrifice his life. All the passions rampaging through the bloody history of our time are taken up, unmasked, and terrifyingly displayed in Esch's modest adventure.

Milan Kundera

It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: they look better from a distance.

Rémy de Gourmont

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

Bertrand Russell

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

Alain de Botton

If the opposite of certainty is doubt, humility must lie somewhere between the two,

Ron Suskind

Deeply convinced of the reality of the divine will, he (Lincoln) had no patience at all with any who were perfectly sure they knew the details of the divine will.

Elton Trueblood

The only certainty in life is that all things will certainly change.

Jack Deveny

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Certainty Quotes

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