Quotes About Certainty

Now, ordinarily, when we say we know something, we can give compelling reasons for it. But when a philosopher says he knows he is holding his hand in front of him, he can give no reason that is as certain as the very thing it is meant to be a reason for. My having two hands is not less certain before I have looked at them than afterwards.

It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.

And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.

Certainty can only be on the side of domination. Certainty is to be found in the homogenisation of time, in the freezing of doing into being. Self-determination is inherently uncertain. The death of the old certainties is to be welcomed as a liberation.

Mr. Merrill was most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith's opposite.

Faith itself is a miracle

WELL, NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GOD," said Owen Meany. "I CAN'T SEE HIM—BUT I ABSOLUTELY KNOW HE IS THERE!

What a phrase that is: "that explains everything!" I know better than to think that anything "explains everything" today.

Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. —FREDERICK BUECHNER

Merrill was most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith's opposite.

won't they?

What was true was what was believed, and what was believed was true. And when the bubbles burst, what had once been believed and was therefore true was no longer believed and therefore no longer true. The

For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.

De nada tengo certeza sino de la santidad de los afectos del corazón y de la verdad de la imaginación.

When people are least sure they are often most dogmatic. We

Kennan brooded about Europe's fragility and his own superficiality. "Americanism, like Bolshevism, is a disease which gains footing only in a weakened body," he concluded with youthful certainty.

To settle for anything less than certainty about the truth of the ideas guiding you in the pursuit of your goals would be to leave your life literally to chance.

For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

Which raises another question: How does one know when one knows? In turn this leads to more practical questions: How does one know when to continue to push an experiment? And how does one know when to abandon a clue as a false trail?

A lead is good not because it dances, fires cannons, or whistles like a train but because it is absolute to what follows.

I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

There are some things in this world you rely on, like a sure bet. And when they let you down, shifting from where you've carefully placed them, it shakes your faith, right where you stand.

I had long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no.