Quotes About Certainty

With the cricket, I knew what I was doing - to a degree.

I have doubted myself on several Daily Double answers.

You have to be damn certain you're putting something better in its place.

Common sense says that chairs and tables exist independently of whether anyone happens to perceive them or not.

You have to tailor yourself to everybody. Sometimes people need a firmer hand; some people you can have a laugh with, and they concentrate more. What they needed was more certainty about the future of the company.

To a certain extent I am taking a leap of faith. I'm adding up the evidence on either side, and I'm seeing the evidence of there not being a God is overwhelming compared to the evidence for there being a God.

Sometimes it's great when, you know, you're sitting down to watch a straightforward story, and you know how it's going to go, and you know how it's going to end. That's a fairy tale.

I don't talk in ifs.

Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language.

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. (Peirce 1992, pp. 28–9)

Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond your control.

There is beautiful you are." "No," said Marged, between a sigh and a sob. "Yes," said Owen. "No," said Marged, not so certain. "Behold," Owen said, from Solomon. "thou art fair. Thou hast dove's eyes." "Dove's eyes are small." Marged said. "Yours are so big they are my whole world," said Owen.

The logical extension of synthetic nature is the irrelevance of "true" nature--the certainty that it's not even worth looking at. (62)

there's evidence to show that "certainty" is only a feeling, like anger or excitement, the result of unconscious forces at work in the brain.

The more someone assures you that everything is okay, the more you can be assured that it's not.

I know—I knew it then—but I didn't believe it. Belief and knowledge aren't the same thing. Belief is much more powerful.

Belief and knowledge aren't the same thing. Belief is much more powerful.

Never put a question mark where God puts a period.

There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.

There are times I almost think I am not sure of what I absolutely know. Very often find confusion in conclusion I concluded long ago. In my head are many facts that, as a student, I have studied to procure. In my head are many facts of which I wish I was more certain I was sure.

Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.

The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we're left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up.

The meeting introduced me- or, perhaps no introduction was necessary- to the awful collision between the silent, unfeeling dead and immensity of feeling they generate in the living. I left the room with relief, making a mental note to avoid the bereaved at all costs and stick to the safe world inhabited by the dead, with its facts, its measurements, its certainties. In their universe, there was a complete absence of emotion. Not to mention its ugly sister, pain.

Nothing is so certain as that which is certain after doubts. Nil tam certum quam quod ex dubio certum. Shaking settles and roots.