Quotes About Uncertainty

Life is funny isn't it? Just when you think you've got it all figured out, just when you finally begin to plan something, get excited about something, and feel like you know what direction you're heading in, the paths change, the signs change, the wind blows the other way, north is suddenly south, and east is west, and you're lost. It is so easy to lose your way, to lose direction. And that's with following all the signposts

Anyway, it doesn't matter how much, how often, or how closely you keep an eye on things because you can't control it. Sometimes things and people just go. Just like that.

Hard to say the right thing, these days.

Since they have no choice. I felt myself tumbling from the high plain onto which Mr. Mompellion's sermon that morning had lofted me. What choice had we, after all?

when every day was tainted by the foul breath of a fear that could not be faced forthrightly, yet could not be ignored.

Randoll burst through the blanket-door when he heard his lusty son, and his big miner's hand fluttered like a moth from the damp head of the babe to his wife's flushed cheek and back again, as if he didn't know which of them he most wanted to touch.

From there, the future is a place that looks darker every day.

plans, Lola's doubts revisited her. Branko was a zealot. In Belgrade he'd been interrogated and beaten

The wishes and desires of the powerful can be fickle things. I knew this. But I knew it in that deep place where one hides knowledge that is inconvenient, or too painful to admit, even to oneself.

I suppose the answer was that if something can be known, I can't stand not knowing it.

It was as if a deep fog had settled on me and everything around me, and I groped my way from one chore to the next without really seeing anything clearly.

I hate clowns. You can't see what they're thinking.

As we explore these possibilities we must remember that they are just that — not predictions or prophecies.

Men kan weg moeten, zonder dat men ergens heen moet. Dat zijn de gevallen, dat men ergens vandaan moet.

We have to learn to live with uncertainty.

Einstein's rule is a general way to realize that less can be more in an uncertain world.

RISK: If risks are known, good decisions require logic and statistical thinking. UNCERTAINTY: If some risks are unknown, good decisions also require intuition and smart rules of thumb.

If we knew everything about the future with certainty, our lives would be drained of emotion. No surprise and pleasure, no joy or thrill—we knew it all along. The first kiss, the first proposal, the birth of a healthy child would be about as exciting as last year's weather report. If our world ever turned certain, life would be mind-numbingly dull. The

Because these calculations generate precise numbers for an uncertain risk, they produce an illusory certainty.

plans." To be sure, illusions have their function. Small children often need security blankets to soothe their fears. Yet for the mature adult, a high need for certainty can be a dangerous thing. It prevents us from learning to face the uncertainty pervading our lives. As hard as we try, we cannot make our lives risk-free the way we make our milk fat-free.

The quest for certainty is the biggest obstacle to becoming risk savvy. While there are things we can know, we must also be able to recognize when we cannot know something.

The most popular of these numbers is called "value at risk." No judgment or understanding of the assets is necessary; all you have to do is look at the number. Yet the world of money is an uncertain world, not one of known risks.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Erich Fromm To be alive at all involves some risk. Harold Macmillan

I have become involved with thinking and acting without the help of an ideology; I have nothing that helps me, no idea that I serve and am known for . . . no rules that regulate the how, no belief that gives me direction, no picture of the future, no instruction that produces an overly ordered mind. I acknowledge only what is and, accordingly, regard every description and configuration of that which we don't know as madness. Ideologues seduce and exploit uncertainty, legitimize war.