Quotes About Certainty

But disbelief wasn't enough to wound someone. Disbelief only hurt when someone wanted to believe.

You will never go wrong with trusting God. Never.

The more uncivilised the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. The truly civilised man is always skeptical and tolerant. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.

Three things never trust in- The maiden sworn as pure, The vows a king has given, And an ambush that is sure.

You must be a real thing. I finally figured out this place has linear time. I wouldn't dream something as silly as linear time, so you've got to be real.

Quien se conforme con ganancias seguras, difícilmente llegará a amasar grandes riquezas; quien lo fíe todo a grandes aventuras, frecuentemente quebrará y caerá en la pobreza: es bueno, por lo tanto, proteger las aventuras con los frutos de la certidumbre para que puedan soportar las pérdidas. Sir Francis Bacon

Instinct is a strange thing. You cannot touch it, feel it, smell it, or hear it, but you must trust it, and that night, as we listened to the slap of the waves and the creak of the oars, I was as certain as I could be that my fears were justified.

Doubt weakens the will.

It is as though life slows. The enemy moves as if he is wading in mud, but I was kingfisher fast. There is rage, but it is a controlled rage, and there is joy, the joy that the poets celebrate when they speak of battle, and a certainty that death is not in that day's fate.

They could not all be right. At least, some had to be more right than others. Or less wrong.

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know

Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. I think, therefore I am says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

Even if all the experts agree, they may well be mistaken.

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.

La Ciencia en ningún momento está totalmente en lo cierto, pero rara vez está completamente equivocada y tiene en general mayores posibilidades de estar en lo cierto que las teorías no científicas.

Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Some things are believed because people feel as if they must be true, and in such cases an immense weight of evi­dence is necessary to dispel the belief.