Quotes About Certitude

No necesitamos pruebas. ¡No le pedimos a nadie que nos crea!

Vannessa wasn't wrong.

If this war has taught us anything, it is that convictions of righteous certitude can be soul-corrupting illusions that offer mo dispensation from hell.

An atheist is someone who is certain that God doesn't exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.

One of the great commandments of science is, Mistrust arguments from authority. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.) Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else. This independence of science, its occasional unwillingness to accept conventional wisdom, makes it dangerous to doctrines less self critical, or with pretensions of certitude.

Life is not so predictable. I am forced to listen more carefully. In the right and left worlds, the stories told are largely set, there much to defend at the expense of the other, rhetoric is charged with certitude; it's safer here, we are sure we are correct. We become missionaries for a position, yes, exactly, no doubt about it, practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world.

True faith is not hard at all. It is soft in its resilience, yielding in its certitude — the vehicle for absolute grace.

I never ask myself if it's worth it, and that's how I know it is.

It's a done deal; you couldn't screw it up if you tried.

In fact, without doubt, there is no faith.

we have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its roots in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone and we are not alone when we imitate. It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

must say that I think we can accept

What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

Certitude is not evidence of truth. Nor does repetition make it true. If anything, repetition should make you suspicious. Truth always stands up to scrutiny on its merits.

If you believe it, you don't need proof.

If you believe it, you don't need proof.

And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.

It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.

The sharpest of natural experiences is like sleep, compared with the awakening which is contemplation. The keenest and surest natural certitude is a dream compared to this serene comprehension.

It's not the innocence that made him so certain. It's the arrogance of his guilt.

In a situation in which every rational person is telling you a fact and you're the one who denies it, doesn't that make you the one most likely wrong?

I'm actually not a big fan of the word hope. I think it's a depressing word. I don't want to hope - I want to know. Like I don't hope there's a God, I know there's a God.

You can't know, you can only believe - or not.