Quotes About Certainty

Back in my days as a chemistry student, I used to be quite a technocrat. I was firmly convinced that scientists would have cornered God and photographed Him in color by 1951.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

If one has the answers to all the questions - that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.

I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it's a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you're an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you're religious, there's a mystery left there.

True believers of Scientology seem to know with utmost certainty that they have found the answer to the deepest riddles of all time - they may or may not be right, but that kind of self-belief is very appealing.

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown.

The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism.

Faith given back to us after a night of doubt is a stronger thing, and far more valuable to us than faith that has never been tested.

As the future is never known with certainty, the evaluation of the prospective benefits requires the formation of expectations. An acceptable house, partner or job, then, is one that offers an expected stream of future benefit that has a value in excess of the option to continue to search for an even better alternative.

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values.

I trust you, she murmured through urgency. Completely. Without end, and before the beginning.

The daddy-at-home theory posits that concealed ovulation evolved to promote monogamy, to force the man to stay home, and thus to bolster his certainty about his paternity of his wife's children. The many-fathers theory instead posits that concealed ovulation evolved to give the women access to many sex partners and thus to leave many men uncertain as to whether they sired her children.

Maybe I'd see how you could be so certain that we had no chance...at all.

Maybe those sorts of yes-or-no life-and-death decisions are easier to make because they are so black and white. I can cope with them because it's easier. Human emotions, well. . .they're just a fathomless collection of grays and I don't do so well on the midtones.

Before, I suspected I might not amount to anything, and now I now I won't, so at least it takes away the wearisome burden of delusive hope

Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.

He broke the bank with that claim, and he lived up to it. Although he could have mentioned a myriad of other benefits, it was the lack of waiting that hit the bulls-eye for him.

Hope in the Scriptures always is a confident expectation; the word hope never carries even the connotation of uncertainty that adheres to our English term (as when we say cautiously, "I hope so"). There is no "hope so" about the biblical concept.

Absolute certainty is the greatest of all illusions.

The opening sentence of his latest book could have served as his personal motto: Absolute certainty is the greatest of all illusions.

Here's what I say - when you don't know or can't know the answer to a question, why not believe the answer you like best? It's as valid as any of the others - and it might be right.