Quotes About Ambiguity

Some days load themselves with questions whose answers have died, and maybe never mattered hugely

We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.

Invoked a curse and swore (Matt. 26:74; Mark 14:71). The text does not specify on whom Peter called down curses, though the ESV and other translations include "on himself," implying that he was calling for curses to come upon him if he was lying. Alternatives are that he was cursing the ones who were accusing him of knowing Christ or that he was actually cursing Christ, amplifying his sense of guilt. Certainty is not possible.

as dark did with light and weakness with strength. Nothing was simple or pure;

Don't deal in the possibilities of the possibility.

Neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring.

To hold with the hare and run with the hound.

I had either been insulted or praised. Perhaps both.

Ideological ambiguity has been a hallmark of Italian politics since the foundation of the republic in 1946.

Imprecision is, on the whole, highly prized. Definition and categorization are, by contrast, suspect. For

things to remain flexible, they need to be complicated or vague, and preferably both.

The more clearly we are able to express ourselves, the less room there is for ambiguity. The more elaborate and the more precise our vocabulary, the greater the scope for thought and expression. Language is about subtlety and nuance. It is power and it is potent. We can woo with words and we can wound. Despots fear the words of the articulate opponent. Successful revolutions are achieved with words as much as with weapons.

Where once there seemed to be room to wonder, to speculate, to not know, there now seems to be increasing pressure for instant answers, immediate solutions, and narrowly defined results.

what's going on

Things that seem permanent, a given, have a way of changing quickly, to something you don't recognize. And not all change is for the better.

the major problems with being crazy: you're just naturally uncertain about things.

con la variedad compensó la incertidumbre.

La ventaja de ser abogado en lugar de, pongamos por caso, psicoanalista es que los abogados trabajan en un mundo desprovisto de certeza. Vivimos en el mundo de la persuasión.

Ése es uno de los principales problemas de estar loco: nunca estás seguro de las cosas

The computer is very good at solving the problem we have specified and asked it to solve, but less useful when we are not quite sure what the problem is.

It was a rule of London life that anybody could be anybody

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

I've succeeded, I guess, but sometimes maybe to succeed is to fail