Quotes About Certitude

I believe only in the mathematics.

Can you ground your faith on such impossibilities?

The Vietnamese never asked themselves, any more than had the French, whether the Cambodians wanted the new system they were introducing. They acted in the unassailable certitude of a superior truth.

but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only own one encyclopedia.

The demands of exercising it once it is won, however, are so complex and fluid that ideological certitude is often among the first casualties of actual governing.

The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms.

The certitude that some shelf in some hexagon held precious books and that these precious books were inaccessible, seemed almost intolerable.

It is remarkable how completely forgotten episodes, when touched with a word, open to the memory—at first vaguely, like the recollection of a dream, but then with increasing clarity and certitude, until at last all is again present, and one wonders how such scenes could have ever been forgotten.

I'll make the right decision, whichever one it is. I have to be 100 percent, not 95 or 99.

Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là

I never have the nagging doubt of wondering whether perhaps I am wrong.

Dogmatisms have power.

Believe me, life is right in all cases.

I learned that I was right and everyone else wrong when I was nine.

But Yossarian knew he was right, because, as he explained to Clevinger, to the best of his knowledge he had never been wrong.

Are we dealing with doubt or with unbelief? D

I had come for certitude, but the poetic speech does not give certitude.

A myriad bubbles were floating on the surface of a stream. 'What are you?' I cried to them as they drifted by. 'I am a bubble, of course' nearly a myriad bubbles answered, and there was surprise and indignation in their voices as they passed. But, here and there, a lonely bubble answered, 'We are this stream', and there was neither surprise nor indignation in their voices, but just a quiet certitude.

Most of all, though, he was certain. Doubt did not cloud his days, nor did it disturb his dreams.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who need certitude, and those who quest for understanding.

I want to be, if I can, as sure of the world--the real world--around me as is possible. Now, you can only attain that to a certain degree, but I want the greatest degree of control.

I took the liberty of ascertaining as much beforehand, my lord. Of course you did, Bunter. You always ascertain everything.