Quotes About Uncertainty

Or the king could die. Or the horse could die. Or he could teach the horse how to talk.

Accidents are like death. Waiting for us everywhere. Inevitable. Unavoidable. Plan as we might, they defy our planning.

All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or the all too shakable convinction of faith. And if they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I.

Do you believe in God?' Sol had not smiled. He had no choice but to give her the answer he had given her a million times. 'I'm waiting to,' he said.

A lesser light asked Ummon Are there multiple futures> Ummon answered Does a dog have fleas>]

You'll have to ask him in the next life," said Sol tiredly. "He's dead.

I've learned enough this year to know that life may surprise you, but not usually in the ways you imagine.

One day things can be going along like they always were and then, suddenly, in a simple rotation of an overheated planet, everything can change.

It turns out that it is possible to live an entire life—even an examined life, to the degree that I had relentlessly examined mine—and still not know the truth of oneself.

I try to remember that the job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

You know," my aunt says, "I once had a terribly difficult period that lasted twenty-four years." Wait. Twenty-four years? "And it was so important to realize that I didn't know what was on the other side of the darkness. Every so often there was a sliver of light that shot the whole world through with mystery and wonder, and reminded me: I didn't have all the information.

Christopher Bollas, writes: "There is in each of us a fundamental split between what we think we know and what we know but may never be able to think.

I've learned to be wary of those times when I think I know what I'm doing. I've discovered that my best work comes from the uncomfortable but fruitful feeling of not having a clue...

I was in the middle of my second novel and struggling. Instead of engagement, I felt a nagging worry. Had I lost my way? Maybe I had taken a wrong turn—but where? One afternoon, I met a friend of mine, a poet and novelist, for coffee. "I feel like I'm in a boat in the middle of the ocean and there's no land in sight," I told him. He took a sip of his drink and peered at me over his glasses. "Yeah," he said. "And you're building the boat.

And it was so important to realize that I didn't know what was on the other side of the darkness. Every so often there was a sliver of light that shot the whole world through with mystery and wonder, and reminded me: I didn't have all the information.

of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land.

Freedom is anxiety's petri dish. If routine blunts anxiety, freedom incubates it. Freedom says, Even if you don't want to make choices, you have to, and you can never be sure you have chosen correctly. Freedom says, Even not to choose is to choose. Freedom says, So long as you are aware of your freedom, you are going to experience the discomfort that freedom brings. Freedom says, You're on your own. Deal with it.

It's like I've had a stroke. Do you think I've had a stroke? I don't think you've had a stroke. But how do you know? How can you be sure I haven't had a stroke? What are the symptoms of a stroke? I don't know. Look them up. Look them up on line. OK. Hold on...OK. Here it is. Do you have trouble speaking? I have trouble speaking intelligently.

Even the imperative to make choice after choice without clear guidance - allegedly the most nerve-wracking part of the profession - isn't exclusive to writing.

Whenever a person is faced in life with a choice, his whole being trembles with the dilemma of what to do.

All this labour I was at the expence of, purely from my apprehension on the account of the print of a man's foot which I had seen; for as yet I never saw any human creature come near the island, and I had now lived two years under these uneasinesses, which indeed made my life much less comfortable than it was before;

Hoy amamos lo que mañana odiaremos. Hoy buscamos lo que mañana rehuiremos. Hoy deseamos lo que mañana nos asustará e, incluso, nos hará temblar de miedo.

I had more care upon my head now than I had in my state of life in the island where I wanted nothing but what I had, and had nothing but what I wanted; whereas I had now a great charge upon me, and my business was how to secure it.  I had not a cave now to hide my money in, or a place where it might lie without lock or key, till it grew mouldy and tarnished before anybody would meddle with it; on the contrary, I knew not where to put it, or whom to trust with it. 

And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to prevent the spreading of the plague by the utmost human vigilance: viz., that it is impossible to know the infected people from the sound, or that the infected people should perfectly know themselves.