Quotes About Uncertainty

Fate. Free will. God. Three frames of reference that have sustained cultures for centuries. Three frames of reference that can never be proved or disproved.

We can never know everything and we can never be sure. All information is incomplete, and all readings distorted by personal prejudice. And yet we have to take decisions all the time and hope the results favour us.

Often in business we take decisions based on how we interpret the situation, not being sure of whether the call we have taken will work or not. When it works, we are often taken by surprise. But the world at large demands an explanation.

Bhartrihari has to confront the horror of human existence. We can never know everything and we can never be sure. All information is incomplete, and all readings distorted by personal prejudice. And yet we have to take decisions all the time and hope the results favour us.

At the time of action, our decision is based on a set of assumptions. The assumptions may be wrong. Leaders have to constantly deal with uncertainty, give hope to the people even when nothing is clear. Decisions become good or bad in hindsight. We would like to believe that a decision is rational. More often than not, decisions are rationalized.

Everyone looks at the karta for a decision despite data being unreliable, the future being uncertain, and outcomes that are unpredictable. Not everyone can do it. He who is able to make decisions independently is the karta. He who allows others to do so is the yajaman.

This is a book for anyone undertaking an adventure and leaving behind a life that has been familiar, comfortable, and predictable.

Juno MacGuff: I don't know what kind of girl I am.

The moment that we think we know, we've lost our perspective on wisdom.

the future has already happened, just like the past. And one day you will see that there are no answers, only the places we make.

And if the boat sinks?" "And if the sun explodes?" Elliot countered.

Odds were in favor of you dying, either by running into Tyet operations, by starvation or thirst, or by Mother Nature giving you a stone spanking.

I once heard someone say, "I shall die very young. How young? I don't know. Maybe seventy, maybe eighty, maybe ninety. But I shall be very young.

I'm going up to my room now, where I may die.

Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time.

Sometimes, though, you could do the right thing and still feel sick with doubt.

Olivia: "Were you aiming at someone?" Alec: "...God, I think...

around the open windows, but it was too

Nothing is ever the same. Nothing is permanent. Nothing can be trusted to be there. Nothing is safe, including home. Why lie to yourself? Every day we leave something, someone, some observation behind.

When I was younger - it might be a romantic idea - I always thought I might go crazy.

I don't really know how to relate to a long-term day-in day-out kind of comfortable relationship.

Diane Von Furstenberg

And for the rest of her life, the girl, the woman, she never made a mark on anyone either that proved anything absolutely for certain, that she could ever see, about what she had done at any time, and this does not break her heart. "Cloud

My husband said to me while I was swooning in his arms, 'Why are all the longest dances the draggiest?' I took this to mean that he has not loved me for a very long time. Everything means something, or it does not. I have expressed an opinion. Every effect has a source that is not unfamiliar. It's all so evil. ("The Uncanny")