Quotes About Certainty

If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must after all be correct.

And yet he wondered, was it enough? It must be... there was nothing else.

I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof...

We might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.

The frightening thing—frightening, I don't know if it's frightening—frustrating, frightening, fascinating thing is we know with virtual certainty that the universe is at least a thousand times bigger in volume than the horizon, than we can ever, ever, ever in principal ever see. So we know there's stuff out there that we will never be able to detect. And we can't tell what it is. We can't tell if it's similar to us.

Lei non crede in niente - disse il professore. - Oh sì, in qualche cosa. Forse in troppe, per i tempi che corrono.

Logic is the foundation of the certainty of all the knowledge we acquire.

So when dogmatic atheists assume that science has all the answers, or imagine that it soon will, they are no more immune than the most literal religious fundamentalist to the deceptive enchantment of certainty.

Especially the doubt, which is in many ways essential to real faith.

Where certainty is often a refusal to think, to question, to reason - a refusal to engage in the kind of Socratic dialogue with unbelief that the Quran urges - faith requires an awareness of the possibility of being wrong, which is why it is perhaps best defined in Hebrews 11:1 as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not see.

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I'm not feeling it. I believe in God even when he is silent. —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

I accept that life is uncertain--that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next. And then, miracle of miracles, out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing--a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.

One does not learn anything except by believing something, and -- conversely -- if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing everything uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relationship between the two cannot be reversed.

But if the biblical story is true, the kind of certainty proper to a human being will be one which rests on the fidelity of God, not upon the competence of the human knower. It will be a kind of certainty which is inseparable from gratitude and trust.

When I cannot feel the faith of assurance, I live by the fact of God's faithfulness. Matthew Henry

Faith is not a sense, nor sight, nor reason, but simply taking God at His word. Christmas Evans The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety. George Mueller

Active faith gives thanks for a promise even though it is not yet performed, knowing that God's contracts are as good as cash. Matthew Henry

You want to know what it's like to be a demon? Imagine knowing, always and forever, that you are right, and that everyone and everything else is wrong.

He didn't need a magic rabbit to tell him his future, he knew his future because it was already here. This was the happily ever after part. Close the book, put it down, walk away.

It is necessary to choose: if you wish to be an empiricist, you must abandon the hope of founding scientific knowledge on a solid and certain basis; if you wish to have a solidly established science, you must place it under the protection of the idea of Necessity and, in addition, recognize this idea as primordial, original, having no beginning and consequently no end - that is to say, you must endow it with the superiorities and qualities that men generally accord to the S

Whatever our definition of truth may be, we can never renounce Descartes' clare et distincte (clarity and distinctness).

We very often express in a categorical form a judgment of which we do not feel assured, we even lay stress on its absolute validity. We want to see what opposition it will arouse, and this can be achieved only by stating our assumption not as a tentative suggestion, which no one will consider, but as an irrefutable, all-important truth. The greater the value of the assumption has for us, the more carefully do we conceal any suggestion of its improbability.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.