Quotes About Certitude

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

What made him stand out, to some as an inspiration, to others as an oddity, and to others as an offense, was that he did not hope that God heard his prayers, but knew it.

He did not hope that God heard his prayers; he knew it.

Mousefang's right.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.

Nothing is certain except death and taxes.

but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris.

Father Quixote thought: How many times I have felt guilty as he does without knowing why. Sometimes he envied the certitude of those who were able to lay down clear rules--Father Heribert Jone, his bishop, even the Pope. Himself, he lived in a mist, unable to see a path, stumbling.

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I have no faith at all, I only hold conviction.

Roark spoke quietly. He was the only man in the room who felt certain of his own words.

Nope, nothing wrong here.

We engage in conceptualising to clarify, to understand, to find certitude. (…) [W]e go nowhere with this process[.] … [W]e teach uncertainty, doubt, and meaninglessness to our children, all in the name of 'truth' … [I]t just goes on, generation after generation, the continuation of greed, anger, and ignorance.

But being confident you are right is not the same as being right.

Being confident you are right is not the same as being right.

A reasonable person believes, in short, that each of his beliefs is true and that some of them are false.

Tengo la razón, la tengo siempre, y estoy equivocada.

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

I only believe those things which can be proved; but I know full well that proofs are relative and can, and are in fact, continually superseded and cancelled out by other proved facts; and therefore I believe that doubt should be the mental approach of all who aspire to get ever closer to the truth, or at least to that much of truth that it is possible to establish. . .

I had escaped the snare of certitude that I welcomed so avidly at first and entered, via the name of Jesus, the wide and comprehensive company of Jesus.