Quotes About Uncertainty

War, I concluded, paralyzes people's power of judgment.

Si tu as peur de te faire mal, tu augmentes les chances, justement, de te faire mal. Regarde les funambules, tu crois qu'ils pensent au fait qu'ils vont peut-être tomber lorsqu'ils marchent sur la corde raide ? Non, ils acceptent ce risque, et goûtent le plaisir que braver le danger leur procure. Si tu passes ta vie à faire attention de ne rien te casser, tu vas terriblement t'ennuyer tu sais...

Nos hemos despeñado. Igual que unos alpinistas a los que acabaran de quitar la pared montañosa, el punto de apoyo al que se aferraban para no perder el pie. Aunque te hayas hecho a la idea que va a suceder lo peor, la caída siempre es un brutal golpetazo.

Se hai paura di farti male, aumenti le probabilità di fartene sul serio. Guarda i funamboli: secondo te, quando camminano sulla corda tesa pensano che potrebbero cadere? No, accettano il rischio, e assaporano il gusto che procura scampare al pericolo. Se passi la vita cercando di non romperti niente, ti annoierai tantissimo, credimi...

Quién conoce, cuando se despierta, que aquél va a ser el día de su muerte?

The advice that knowledge-intensive firms produce is usually presented as an authoritative final answer, but look behind the scenes and you discover that knowledge workers themselves are often very uncertain.

Taking a leap of faith is better than taking a leap of doubt.

Ah, Officer Orcot…what am I going to do about you? I do enjoy your company. One of these days, I may not let you leave.

I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don't know where to aim it yet.

I think things will always be okay between us, Clark. That's what I'm beginning to realize. Until they're not. Know what I mean? And even then they'll probably still be okay.

A new fear began to grip me, almost as powerful as the fear of what could befall us on the mountain: the fear of running out of reading material.

I'm scared shitless." Knowing and accepting that a few things were bound to go wrong.

Who is ultimately stronger? The answer is undetermined.

Because you never know exactly what you'll find inside that black box until you open it, there is a temptation to hope—perhaps not quite consciously—that your next race won't be one of those grinding affairs. This hope is a poor coping skill. Bracing yourself—always expecting your next race to be your hardest yet—is a much more mature and effective way to prepare mentally for competition.

Did you hear something?" "No." "Did I hear something?" "...I don't know...

That was how she had felt most of her life. Caught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret.

No one is ever completely right about anything. Anywhere.

But it only takes a doubt. A drop of ink falls into a clear glass of water and clouds the whole thing. So the moment after I realised I wasn't perfectly well was the moment I realised I was still very ill indeed.

Everything in life is uncertain. That is how you know you are existing in the world, the uncertainty. Of course, this is why we sometimes want to return to the past, because we know it, or think we do. It's a song we've heard.

That is the whole thing with the future. You don't know. At some point you have to accept that you don't know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.

Equidistant. Not aligned to one bank or the other...caught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret.

Being a parent is standing on a shore and watching her child in a vulnerable craft, heading out over deeper and deeper water, hoping but not knowing there will be land somewhere ahead.

Maybe the point of life is to give up certainty and to embrace life's beautiful uncertainty.

The present is known. The future is unknown. The present is solid. The future is abstract. Ruining the present by worrying about the future is like burning your most treasured possession simply because you might one day lose other possessions that you don't own yet.