Quotes About Certainty

I had always believed that right was like north to my father: a thing as real as sunlight, a place on the map, the arrow on a compass. It was the unalterable facts of duty, love, and conscience. But our world had gone so far north that the compass could make no sense of it, could only spin hopelessly in it binnacle. North had melted right off the map.

It's strange that the only certainty life gives us is one we fear so much.

Any life, bad as it may be, is better than nothing. Better than terror and that frozen fear of death. It's strange that the only certainty life gives us is one we fear so much.

Science is much better at finding things that exist than at ruling out things that don't.

You believe. You just don't put a name to it.

To them that ask, where have you seen the gods, or how do you know for certain there are gods, that you are so devout in their worship I answer Neither have I ever seen my own soul, and yet I respect and honor it.

Quaedam iura non scripta, sed omnibus scriptis certiora sunt.

Even the stoics agree that certainty is very hard to come at; that our assent is worth little, for where is infallibility to be found?

All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.

But believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.

My God had not spoken to me again. But neither had He forsaken me. I knew that. For damned sure, I knew that.

Truth is a slippery concept." "No, the great thing about the truth is that it's true.

Joy asks "What if God?" and declares "But if not!

It was better to know the worst than to wonder.

What's that?" said the cat-- "Faith." "To believe what I tell you about what your don't know," said the fish.

However carefully a judge is protected by the experience and the logic of the law, there must be times -not many, I know, or we should have no judges- when the same frightful question must be answered. Not faced, you see, but answered. Every now and again he must have to say to himself, in effect, "Everyone agrees that this colour is black, and my reason tells me it is so, but on my soul, do I know?

The big truth, maybe the only truth, is that we don't know anything for sure.

It has memory's ear that can hear without having to hear. Like the gyroscope's fall, truly unequivocal because trued by regnant certainty, it is a power of strong enchantment. It is like the dove- neck animated by sun; it is memory's eye; it's conscientious inconsistency.

Jeg havde lyst til at sige til dem: 'Nej, jeg er ikke tosset og har aldrig været det. Eller måske er jeg tosset, men så er i det også.

a belief is nothing more than a thought that you've decided is significant and true.

Even a stopped clock is right two times a day.

It's not that I don't believe in miracles, but I never quite trust that they're real.

f you wish to put off all worry, assume that what you fear may happen is certainly going to happen.

Don't dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.