Quotes About Uncertainty

Age was authority in the sixteenth century, and More's deep reverence for his father showed a general habit of mind that offered a way of managing uncertainty. If the authority of experience can be trusted, there may be in respect for age a way of fending off questions that might otherwise overwhelm.

Then this travesty of manhood reascended to his feet, and said, whether speaking to me or to himself I could not tell

We experience a powerful reluctance to narrow our options—so powerful that we often miss out on good opportunities in order to avoid losing the remote possibility of something better.

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

The most difficult of decisions are often not the ones in which we cannot determine the correct course; rather the ones in which we are certain of the path but fear the journey.

Nothing is more excruciating than waiting for the jury's verdict. Except, perhaps, hearing the jury's verdict.

The sun will rise again. The only uncertainty is whether or not we will rise to greet it. Alan Christensen's diary

Life is a house of cards, balanced on a tetter-totter, precariously perched on a roller coaster. The only thing that should surprise us about our surprises is that we are surprised by them. Beth Cardall's Diary

No one marries expecting it to fail. And even when it's good, who knows how long it's going to last?

You served your country. That was an honorable thing." "I wish it were that simple," he said. "I risked my life and had no idea what I was fighting for—a corrupt dictatorship that represented almost everything we're fighting against?

The people in our lives are like cards in a deck. At different times we draw, hold, and discard, but, in the end, we don't really know the cards' value until life calls our hand.

Sometimes the evolving terrain of life requires us to evolve with it. When those times come, we usually find ourselves quivering on the precipice of change as long as we can, because no one wants to dive headlong into the ravine of uncertainty. No one. Only when the pain of being becomes too much do we close our eyes and leap.

How did I come to such a dark place? I don't know where my road now leads but I fear the shadowlands that lie ahead. But it is not the darkness of the path I fear. Just the loneliness of the trail.

and sometimes we have to take it on faith that we are actually making progress, getting closer to our destination. Faith. Four months

the only thing you can be sure of in this life is that sooner or later everything goes wrong.

And remember this. No victory is certain. No situation is hopeless. When you find yourselves in a hopeless situation, change the rules.

Billy Reynolds, of Engine Co. 76, mentioned that a lot of firefighters were probably going to die today, and no one could argue the point. In fact, we let his comment just hang there in the room for a while, none of us saying anything, each of us lost in our own private thoughts, wondering which of our brothers we were about to lose, if it would be one of us.

There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.

We don't really know what Ebola has done in the past, and we don't know what it might do in the future.

Do you know how you felt when you would lean all the way back in a chair, and just before you were about to tip over, at the very last second, you'd catch yourself ? That's how I feel all the time.

Of course I know very little about architecture, and the older I get the less I know.

There are times I almost think I am not sure of what I absolutely know. Very often find confusion in conclusion I concluded long ago. In my head are many facts that, as a student, I have studied to procure. In my head are many facts of which I wish I was more certain I was sure.