Quotes About Certainty

especially what it has to say to me personally or to my society.

my case does not rise or fall depending on whether the visions were veridical or not.

it does not have to be veridical. It has to be believed.

Nerves, he thought, were for people who hadn't entirely made up their minds.

Nope, nothing wrong here.

I don't think anybody can ever be a hundred percent sure of anything in this wicked world, but I wanted to get up to ninety-eight.

Some things just have to be true, Scott said, because they have no other choice.

Death and taxes are the only two certainties in life, as Mark Twain once said. Or was it Benjamin Franklin?

Almost all religions provide opportunities for human beings to convince themselves of their own righteousness, to speak in the name of God, and even to go to war on God's behalf. This 'blasphemy of certainty' is also rife among secularists who in their case have not God but science or the proletariat on their side.

Pardon me that I have feared for you. Fear is born in doubt, and you have not merited my doubt.

Nadie en el mundo está completamente equivocado. Incluso un reloj parado está en lo correcto dos veces al día. PAULO COELHO, ESCRITOR

For the record, I take no satisfaction in being right. For the record, I pray to God that I'm wrong. I'm not wrong...

It's hard to be aggressive when you're confused.

If your idea of good opposes something else, you can be sure that [it] is not absolute or certain.

Truth is not … something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.]

There are two kinds of knowledge … One consists of beliefs, opinions, conjectures – having an idea of something. (…) But this is not the true knowing. (…) We think that our beliefs and ideas can be relied on to give us satisfaction. … In fact, they're … our primary source of anxiety and fear, because they're always subject to contradiction and doubt.

The minute you hesitate you are in trouble.

Isn't an agnostic just an atheist without balls?

But being confident you are right is not the same as being right.

A moral compass can convince you that all the answers are obvious (even when they're not); that there is a bright line between right and wrong (when often there isn't); and, worst, that you are certain you already know everything you need to know about a subject so you stop trying to learn more.

When asked to name the attributes of someone who is particularly bad at predicting, Tetlock needed just one word. "Dogmatism," he says. That is, an unshakable belief they know something to be true even when they don't.

Beliefs," things we hold to be true but which may not be easily verified.

Tis much better to do a little with certainty and leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

Being confident you are right is not the same as being right.