Quotes About Uncertainty

I've been broke even oftener than I've been wealthy. Of the two, being broke is more interesting, as a man who doesn't know where his next meal is coming from is never bored. He may be angry or several other things—but not bored. His predicament sharpens his thoughts, spurs him into action, adds zest to his life, whether he knows it or not.

All right, all right, have it your own way! I can't prove I'm right—so I must be wrong. Men!

There wasn't any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous...fatal, in the end.

A religion is sometimes a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong---and you are strong. The great trouble with religion---any religion---is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask in at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason---but one cannot have both

I often calculate odds on horse races; the civil service computermen frequently program such requests. But the results are so at variance with expectations that I have concluded either that the data is too meager, or the horses or riders are not honest. Possibly all three.

Matt, you are suffering from a disease of youth—you expect moral problems to have nice, neat, black-and-white answers.

Me, I had never been sure – only thing I was sure of was that Dr. Chan would not himself sit on a target. But he might not warn his old mother.

the ways of God and government and girls are all mysterious, and it is not given to mortal man to understand them.

However, you are just as dead if you buy a farm in an "incident" as you are if you buy it in a declared war.

His lights blinked in binary read-out as he answered by voder, "Eleven thousand two hundred thirty-eight with uncertainty plus-minus eighty-one representing possible identities and nulls. Shall I start program?

Uncertainty may be the factor that makes life tolerable. Hope is what keeps us going.

Random' and 'chance' are not related. 'Random chance' is a nonsense expression

Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

How can I be sure? I'm a doctor, not a fortune-teller.

danger is no novelty.

It is easy to panic and either open a chute too soon and become a sitting duck (do ducks really sit?—if so, why?) or fail to open it and break your ankles, likewise backbone and skull.

There is no complete theory of anything.

For the paranoids, this increases their paranoia, which they seem to enjoy. For a guerrilla ontologist like me, it increases my agnosticism, which I prefer to paranoia, because I find it more amusing and less depressing.

If perception is not absolute, no deduction from perception can be absolute. No matter how ingeniously one juggles with approximations, they do not magically turn into certainties; at best, they become the most accurate possible approximations.

Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude.

Between choices, we evidently return to the maybe state until we make another choice. Existence precedes essence, remember?

Or, as Einstein once said — quoted by Korzybski in Science and Sanity — Insofar as the laws of mathematics are certain, they do not refer to reality; and insofar as they refer to reality, they are not certain.

In daily life and in common sense, we use this agnostic caution most of the time and expect the unexpected and keep our eyes and ears open, etc. We only rush to judgment when we are under time-pressure to make a quick decision or when our prejudices are involved, as in political and religious controversy.

When there is no existential pressure for quick decisions, only prejudice asserts certitude.