Quotes About Certainty

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

The Truth is the Truth.

It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.

Because it is so unbelievable, the truth often escapes being known.

hate me, too . . . because I'm always right. I understand how painful that must be for others who aren't always right.

Do you think there is any chance the Lord would have inspired his prophets to prophesy about us, only to then take a chance on the outcome of the latter days by sending men and women he couldn't count on? There is no chance - zero chance - He would have done that.

Unlikely things are often true . . .

Nah," Tommy said. "There's nothing up there

Faith is not contrary to reason.

Far too often, especially under stress (and few things could have been more stressful than the Entebbe crisis), we turn inward and close down. Believing that distraction is the greatest danger, our analysis simplifies in hope of increasing not the odds of success, necessarily, but the chance we will be certain about what the outcome will be.

I have earned the title of expert, it is only on what was. There is no expert on what will be. And yet, without knowing the future, I remain a man full of hope.

We need proof in our society.

Surety is the end of creativity.

Questions of absolute good and evil are much better not opened to public debate these days, when so few people are sure of their absolutes

The melancholy comes over me, the dismal misery of not knowing where I am, or perhaps losing any sense of who I am, as if the mist is bringing about an evaporation of identity, all the certainties of the self leaching away into the cloud.

There are normal times when it is wholly admirable to be steadfast, resolute, unconflicted, and therefore when integrity is unmistakenly a virtue. The person of integrity knows what to do, and does it. But as we have been exploring, there are also times when certainty and single-mindedness indicate something less admirable: a deafness to voices that should be heard or a blindness to aspects of a situation that need to be considered.

The evidence which we have of the great facts of the Bible history belongs to this class, that is, it is moral evidence; sufficient to satisfy any rational mind, by carrying it to the highest degree of moral certainty. If such evidence well justify the taking away of human life or liberty, in the one case, surely it ought to be deemed sufficient to determine our faith in the other.

Similarly, if you're trying to prove something mathematically, it's possible that no proof exists.

Scientific proof is inevitably fickle and shoddy. On the other hand mathematical proof is absolute and devoid of doubt.

An end to timidity - the replacement of the philologically tentative by the lexicographically decisive." - on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary

The only two things that you need not doubt, is your heart and mind. You are guided by your heart and lead by your mind.

Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.