Quotes About Certainty

Truth is terrific, reality is even better, but believability is the best of all

The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.

Belief creates the actual fact.

I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather I fear to lose truth by the pretension to possess it already wholly.

Damn the Absolute!

I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

To know is one thing, and to know for certain that we know is another. One

Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not.

Faith is when you believe something that you know ain't true.

I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or wilfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule.

Loss, once it's become a certainty, is like a rock you hold in your hand. It has weight and dimension and texture. It's solid and can be assessed and dealt with. You can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away.

To say that one need art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.

Really? That's what it stems from, is it? You've got it all sorted out, have you? Faith is stupidity, is it?

a secondary effect of being angry, which was recently discovered by researchers, is that we become more certain of our judgments. When we're angry, we know we're right, as anyone who has been in a relationship can attest.

Not cocky overconfidence that comes from collecting biased information and ignoring uncertainties, but the real confidence that comes from knowing you've made the best decision that you could.

As the authors of the book Surprise put it, "We feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they're not.

The linkages between emotion and behavior can be more subtle, though. For instance, a secondary effect of being angry, which was recently discovered by researchers, is that we become more certain of our judgments. When we're angry, we know we're right, as anyone who has been in a relationship can attest.

tripwires allow us the certainty of committing to a course of action, even a risky one, while minimizing the costs of overconfidence.

A study showed that when doctors reckoned themselves "completely certain" about a diagnosis, they were wrong 40% of the time. When a group of students made estimates that they believed had only a 1% chance of being wrong, they were actually wrong 27% of the time.

Create a need for closure.

Dia yakin tentang itu. Bukankah itulah kebenaran? Kekuatan keyakinan seseorang merembes kepada orang-orang di sekitarnya--ke dalam tanah, udara, dan air-- sampai tidak ada yang lainnya." -Krishna

In certain areas where it is not possible to check the validity of a certain concept, if somebody with a good track record states it, then one can consider that statement as "temporary truth" until one is in a position in the future to validate it.

They felt that it was overwhelming evidence for something, that it proved something beyond any reasonable doubt, but they were not sure what.