Quotes About Certainty

Ignorance was ever the iron of certainty, for it was as blind to itself as sleep. It was the absence of questions that made answers absolute—not knowledge!

There's faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there's faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they're not entirely certain they're in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God's mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence . . .

Maithanet carried a plague whose primary symptom was certainty. How the God could be equated with the absence of hesitation was something Achamian had never understood. After all, what was the God but the mystery that burdened them all? What was hesitation but a dwelling-within this mystery? Perhaps

Ignorance is trust. —

Piety was simple, and the World, woefully complex. What was virtuous, what was holy: these were verities that only the simple and the enslaved could know with certainty.

Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery. Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system.

What was your name again? Still Eve. No, I'm sure it's something else. That doesn't seem right.

No. --Claire Bullshit! Yes, a world of yes. --Eve

You were right," she said. "You were always right, about everything. And I will always love you, Sam. Forever.

I knew you'd come,Claire.I knew you would.Dear God,you took your time.

But the only thing more certain than death and taxes is bullies.

We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things.

For the greatest happiness of women is to be right one day, one hour, one second after being wrong all their lives...apparently.

Believing isn't wishing, Grady. What you know with your heart is the only thing you really ever know.

Understanding wasn't always necessary, as long as you believed.

The truth was in her voice as sure as rain and sunshine are in a green blade of grass.

I asked for a sign that what I had done was necessary. Just one small sign. Nothing big. One small but incontestable sign. I opened my eyes. There was no sign. It doesn't work that way and never did.

Truth could not be redefined. Truth was what it was.

Faith is a kind of love, you know. Love of what is unseen but certain. Love makes us strong and brave.

because truth is always and only what it is

If that were to happen, she couldn't keep her Promise.

perhaps even before you can file the action. In fact, I guarantee it.

When a scientist tells you that 'the science is settled' in regard to any subject," Lamar said, "he's ceased to be a scientist, and he's become an evangelist for one cult or another. The entire history of science is that nothing in science is ever settled. New discoveries are continuously made, and they upend old certainties.

Not at all," she assures him.