Quotes About Certainty

Guarantees are for major appliances, not for murder.

Wait a minute, Richard said. You're betting that the two of you are better than a professional assassin. That you'll get to him before he gets to Anita. We both nodded. What if you're not better? Edward looked at him like he'd said the sun wouldn't rise tomorrow. Edward will be better, I said. You'd bet your life on that? Richard asked. I am betting my life on that, I said.

Sleeping and waking—for him the states grew ever less distinct. Sleep gained in truth as waking lost the arrogance of certainty. Dreams, three-D and portentous, sported a logic no less satisfactory than that of what, by mere consensus, was called the real. Categories dissolved; things floated free of their names, and a kind of geriatric Buddhism became ever more unquestioned and serene.

You never think about the mall being closed. It's always supposed to be there, like milk in the refrigerator or God.

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty. —RUDYARD KIPLING (1865–1936)

The true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

By skepticism . . . we arrive first at suspension of judgment, and second at freedom from disturbance.

Science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible not to believe in God

Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.

What is known for certain is dull.

The thing is, it's very dangerous to have a fixed idea. A person with a fixed idea will always find some way of convincing himself in the end that he is right

It would be better for us to have some doubts in an honest pursuit of truth, than it would be for us to be certain about something that was not true.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion. The former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

As a scientist, I don't believe anything. Science shouldn't use the word belief. There are things more likely and less likely. Science can say nothing with absolute certainty.

To really know is science; to merely believe you know is ignorance.

I don't believe in natural science.

Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence...faith.

I do not believe anything very certainly, but everything very probably.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

By far the best proof is experience.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

But 'the physical level of rigor' is higher on certainty than the logical one, since reproducible experiments are more reliable than anybody's, be it Hilbert's, Einstein's or Gödel's intuition.

That which is provable, ought not to be believed in science without proof.