Quotes About Certainty

All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty.

Men, and governments, must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.

Existe la más grande diferencia entre presumir que una opinión es verdadera, porque oportunamente no ha sido refutada, y suponer que es verdadera a fin de no permitir su refutación.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us:

For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw several ways, and are ready to strangle one another: For the main Evidence of the Christian Doctrine, which is Miracles, is resolved into the certainty of Sense, but this Evidence is clear and point blank against Transubstantiation.

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about

predictability

Screw ambiguity. Perversion and corruption masquerade as ambiguity. I don't trust ambiguity.

If everything isn't black and white I say why the hell not.

When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me." - John Wesley

Although every man necessarily believes that every particular opinion which he holds is true (for to believe any opinion is not true, is the same thing as not to hold it); yet can no man be assured that all his own opinions, taken together, are true. Nay, every thinking man is assured they are not, to be ignorant of many things, and to mistake in some, is the necessary condition of humanity.

When at last he came to his decision, it seemed to him that he had known all along what it would be.

But before William Stoner the future lay bright and certain and unchanging. He saw it, not as a flux of event and change and potentiality, but as a territory ahead that awaited his exploration.

Suddenly Sloane seemed very distant, and the walls of the office receded. Stoner felt himself suspended in the wide air, and he heard his voice ask, "Are you sure?" "I'm sure," Sloane said softly. "How can you tell? How can you be sure?" "It's love, Mr. Stoner," Sloane said cheerfully. "You are in love. It's as simple as that.

But before [William Stoner] the future lay bright and certain and unchanging. He saw it, not as a flux of event and change and potentiality, but as a territory ahead that awaited his exploration. He saw it as the great University library, to which new wings might be built, to which new books might be added and from which old ones might be withdrawn, while its true nature remained essentially unchanged.

You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain." She was quite right. It was that simplicity that seemed somehow to be the nucleus of the shock. From very familiarity one forgets all the forces which keep the balance, and thinks of security as normal. It is not.

We've got to believe that God is sane, Davie boy. We'd be lost indeed if we didn't do that.

You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain.

I told you all this so that you understand that if someone says that something is so, that does not prove that it is so.

She whispered, 'C'etait la Verite?' Was that Verity? Or perhaps she just meant, Was that the truth? Was it true? Did any of it really happen? Were the last three hours real? 'Yes,' I whispered back. 'Oui. C'etait la verite.

No question is ever settled until it is settled right.

Jim Bradley shook his head. Cathy didn't want to admit it, but he had the unmistakable look of someone who was in the right.