Quotes About Uncertainty

It is truly bracing and instructive to contemplate the End Times - at least at safe remove, in the pages of fiction - especially as the world beyond our hearths churns and convulses unknowably, yet perhaps just short of ultimate disaster.

Success is a scary concept because it assumes something kind of final. In the grand scheme of life, I don't think there is some ultimate success.

Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together.

Crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen.

The kind of Iraq that emerges from all of this is ultimately out of our hands.

Ultimately, it's a pretty confusing moment.

So the result was that as one approached a political convention for most of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century until the 1960's, part of the drama was the fact that you didn't know ultimately who was going to be the nominee at the end of that convention week.

Ultimately what I'll do next is up in the air for me.

Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story; we do not know where we are in the story. We do not know who, ultimately, is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end.

I do, kind of, spend a lot. And just on stupid things. Because I don't really know what to do. What are you supposed to do? Um. It just seems like way too much. We don't deserve it, at all, for what we do.

I set out to be the best umpire of my time. But I don't know what it takes to be great.

Being on the run, having to change the way that you do business, being unable to plan in a safe and secure environment, always looking over your shoulder, knowing that some day somebody's going to knock on your door and it's going to be your last.

'The Names' is a story about a woman who might feel that she's in a kind of maze. She's unable to find her way forward or out because she can't see the whole picture.

An environment is precisely something one is unable to point to yet is strangely there nonetheless.

I have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything... to know what's going on so I can feel like I'm in control.

Scientists tend to build a reputation on refuting the theories of those who have gone before. Yet, whatever we hypothesize, observe, measure or record about the natural world, it leaves more unanswered questions.

Unanswered questions make my head itch.

The enduring appeal of mystery stories for all of us is that the world is a pretty confusing place. There's a lot of really unanswered things, and perhaps the scariest notion would be that there might not always be answers out there for us.

Clearly, unless the Lord chooses to explain Himself to us, which often He does not, His motivation and purposes are beyond the reach of mortal man. What this means in practical terms is that many of our questions - especially those that begin with the word 'why' - will have to remain unanswered for the time being.

I have no idea what will become of my work in the future, the future folk will not be aware of our influence over them, as we are unaware of how our dead influence us.

The most interesting character to me is someone who is stuck in the no man's land between Belief and Unbelief, Faith and Faithlessness. I'm capitalizing like a German, but it doesn't matter whether it's faith in a person or in God, or belief in science or whatever, it's the desperate in-between state that makes for interesting dramatic tension.

It's an unbelievable, absurd paradox that we have to put one step in front of the other every day without knowing which one will be our last.

There are no guarantees getting into an England squad: there's so many unbelievable players.

The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.