Quotes About Uncertainty

Three deaths—by snakebite, by explosion, by razor. What next? Death by hot air balloon? Cannon? Trident?

Yes, he wanted to do the right thing, but perhaps this time the right thing was something different.

Rick bowed his head. He didn't pray much—usually, he figured if God was even there, the state of the world made it pretty clear he wasn't listening to the typical thirteen-year-old's prayer

Late-night promises were like Schrödinger's cat, existing in a state of flux, full of the potential to be kept or broken. Only in the morning would he know if the cat was alive or dead.

And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.

The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can't give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don't know anything like enough yet; that I haven't understood enough; that I can't know enough; that I'm always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn't have it any other way.

All of life is a wager

I am so made that I cannot believe.

He was also dying, though we didn't know it yet.

When the book was published, I had just turned sixty-one. I am writing this at a moment when, according to my doctors, I cannot be certain of celebrating another birthday.

Also, ordinary expressions like "expiration date" … will I outlive my Amex?

The point is that Socrates was mocking his accusers in their own terms, saying in effect: I do not know for certain about death and the gods—but I am as certain as I can be that you do not know, either.

No. Even now I can't altogether believe that any of this really happened...

Here, in their midst, George feels a sort of vertigo. Oh God, what will become of them all? What chance have they? Ought I to yell out to them, right now, here, that it's hopeless?

Öyle konular vard?r ki yaÅŸamda, sana soruluncaya kadar kendin bile bunlar? bildiÄŸini bilmezsin.

Berlin was in a state of civil war. Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere; at street corners, in restaurants, cinemas, dance halls, swimming-baths; at midnight, after breakfast, in the middle of the afternoon.

From his angle, the curtain seems to form itself into a shrouded, wavering figure, indescribably terrifying in its very indistinctness. Something waiting, hovering on the threshold of the visible world. Some half-embodied fear gradually assuming a hideous outer form.

That's the scary thing about hope, she said. If you let it go too long it turns into faith.

Mr. Fresh looked up. The book says if we don't do our jobs everything could go dark, become like the Underworld. I don't know what the Underworld is like, Mr. Asher, but I've caught some of the road show from there a couple of times, and I'm not interested in finding out. How 'bout you? Maybe it's Oakland, Charlie said. What's Oakland? The Underworld. Oakland is not the Underworld! The Tenderloin? Charlie suggested.

All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid.

The prospect of change is a many-fanged beast, my dear.

After all the evidence is in--after you've run all the facts by everything you know--and you're still lost, you have to do some things on faith.

You're going to break my heart, aren't you?

In fact, he sorely hoped that it would happen, because otherwise, the world made no sense, there was no justice, and life was just a tangled ball of chaos.