Quotes About Uncertainty

You realize you are like 99.9 percent of the rest of the world, just a cog in the wheel trying to make some sense of where you belong in the incomprehensible grand design of it all. And you realize that people you trust are going to disappoint you, friends will come and go, and those you love will die.

One thinks the worst even while clinging to hopes for the best.

Once you've internalised the concept that you can't prove anything in absolute terms, life becomes all the more about odds, chances, and trade-offs. In a world without provable truths, the only way to refine the probabilities that remain is through greater knowledge and understanding.

That story had at its core a discussion of my fundamental view that nothing in life is certain and that, consequently, all decisions are about probabilities.

The point of the story is that even a highly disciplined investor can't see a market bottom any more easily than he can see the top.

Suspicious we are, we men who walk the earth.

God help us, we can't keep up this pulling, that is certain. Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess.

The skeptic is never for real. There he stands, cocktail in hand, left arm draped languorously on one end of the mantelpiece, telling you that he can't be sure of anything, not even of his own existence. I'll give you my secret method of demolishing universal skepticism in four words. Whisper to him: 'Your fly is open.' If he thinks knowledge is so all-fired impossible, why does he always look?

Nothing is more dangerous than a place of safety.

Avance rápido. ¿No estaría escribiendo estas mismas palabras a 800 kilómetros al norte, dentro de doce años?

Have I not walked without an upward lookOf caution under stars that very wellMight not have missed me when they shot and fell?It was a risk I had to take—and took.

I shall set forth for somewhere,I shall make the reckless choiceSome say when they are in voiceAnd tossing so as to scareThe white clouds over them on,I shall have less to say,But I shall be gone.

Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone That science may have staked the future on? He seems to say the reason why so much Should come to nothing must be fairly faced.

Skepticism, is that anything more than we used to mean when we said, Well, what have we here?

There is no security in this life - only varying degrees of risk. Yet millions unquestioningly sacrifice their lives on the altar of security.

There are always loose ends in real life.

Who was more conscious than the soldier of capricious fortune, of the random roll of the dice?

It was four in the morning, the hopeless hour when shivering insomniacs inhabit a world of hollow shadow, and existence seems frail and strange.

He experienced one of those moments of simultaneous confusion and clarity that belong to the drunk and the desperate.

After a short pause, she said, "I don't think I'll be here for my next birthday, Corm." The words hit him like a punch in the diaphragm. "Don't say that." "If I can't say it to you, who can I say it to?

Can I just ask—are you the Cormoran Strike?" "I doubt there are many others," said Strike.

Robin remained quite still in front of her dressing table, staring down at the box containing her wedding shoes, thinking. She saw the risks plainly spread beneath her, like the rocks and raging waters beneath a tightrope walker's feet.

They might have something else.

Now she hesitated, wondering whether she dare do what she wanted . . . but surely, if they were best friends, it was all right?