Quotes About Uncertainty

The way to leave this life, I always say: some sudden, cataclysmic disaster and whoosh, you're propelled into the next world—or oblivion. One might take one's pick.

She hoped that was the case, anyway, and that, she supposed, was the way it would always be. You hoped that what you did was for the overall good, but you could never be sure. Sometimes there were doubts, and those doubts could persist, but often you really had no choice. You had to feel your way through the complexities of this life and hope, just hope, that you got it right more often than you got it wrong. And sometimes, of course, you did not have to do anything at all.

the fear of what might happen in the future is almost always worse than the future that eventually arrives.

Beaupré, in his native country, had been a hairdresser, then a soldier in Prussia, and then had come to Russia to be outchitel, without very well knowing the meaning of this word.3

I've shed my own skin and merged into the fog.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

On what slender threads do life and fortune hang… !

What fragile and unknown threads the destinies of nations and the lives of men are suspended.

Who can say whether we shall ever see them again?' said Morriel with tearful eyes. 'Darling' replied Valentine, 'has not the count just told us that all human wisdom is summed up in two words? - Wait and hope (Fac et spera)

take away this remaining doubt that, if it does not become a certainty, will turn into remorse.

There is a sort of consolation at the contemplation of the yawning abyss, at the bottom of which lie darkness and obscurity. Edmond

Yet what is expectation but a kind of folly, and what is that folly but an excess of hope?

The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.

In politics, every day is filled with numerous opportunities for serious error. Enjoy it.

Va, et advienne que pourra. Go, and come what may.

I just have a feeling," Dortmunder said. "This is turning into one of those dreams where you keep running down the same corridor and you never get anywhere.

Model utility depends not on whether its driving scenarios are realistic (since no one can know that for sure), but on whether it responds with a realistic pattern of behavior.

For those who stake their identity on the role of omniscient conqueror, the uncertainty exposed by systems thinking is hard to take.

Dynamic systems studies usually are not designed to predict what will happen. Rather, they're designed to explore what would happen, if a number of driving factors unfold in a range of different ways.

He didn't know what to do with the immediate future or what to do with long-range future. These questions should be fairly easy to address. Follow God's direction, plain and simple.

Life was fragile and love was, too. At any moment, even our happiest ones, our world could shatter and we wouldn't see it coming. There was only more loss ahead, showing its ugly face when we least expected it.

Was he going to ask me to go with him? Maybe I was getting ahead of myself and he was just making conversation. Oh, why was talking to a boy so fraught with complication?

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. —C. S. Lewis It

Time passes way too slow when you're waiting for the unknown