Quotes About Certainty

Belief is the distinguishing of the existent from the nonexistent, it is the predication of reality, and on this reality depends the possibility of reasoning.

Every logical act of the intellect is an assertion that something is.

Human authority may furnish conviction, but never certainty. Divine authority is immutable and infallible.

Thus man believes in truths of two kinds, in those of absolute certainty through direct conviction, and in those of comparative certainty through conviction of the trustworthiness of the authority which propounds them.

Supreme happiness to reason, that is the Ideal of the intellect, is the attainment of certainty upon every subject and about all things.

Our convictions are the facts assured to us on the testimony of our own nature, our own senses, or our own reason.

Curiosity, is a movement of the soul towards Truth, which it seeks to assimilate by Knowledge. It is the first step in the direction of Certainty.

Try not to forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.

The certainty of death is the spring of action and therefore of life, and in the implicit religious element in the work of art, life triumphs over death.

Great doubt: great awakening. Little doubt: little awakening. No doubt: no awakening. —Zen mantra

What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence? ...The term was faith .

Like that. It's all right. It's not all right. It's right.

Knowing that you've made a choice that you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving the relationship that you have rather than constantly second-guessing it.

There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.

He who has a true idea simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.

The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure….you are above everything distressing.

Doubt is a one hundred percent trust, in a belief you don't prefer. You are never really actually in doubt. You are always completely trusting in something.

David Hume, the great eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, had put the cat among the pigeons with his notion of scepticism: that nothing can be proved, except in mathematics, and that much of what we take to be fact is merely conjecture.

Reality is what you can count on.

There is something insane about a lack of doubt. Doubt - to me, anyway - is what makes you human, and without doubt, even the righteous lose their grip, not only on reality but also on their humanity.

Oh, it's not really gambling when you never lose.

Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.