Quotes About Uncertainty

This is hard," he said, but he did not seem to address his words to me. "I'm too close to the end. I've had glimpses of this, but never clear ones. And now all I know is that I must go on, and that every step I take leads me closer to my death." He met my eyes and said without shame, "I'm terrified." I smiled. "Welcome to human existence." p. 335 The Fool to Fitz

Any future can be!" she replied, laughing at me. "If it were not so, if it were fixed, it would be a past. You say a foolish thing. How can a future be impossible?

You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this nought of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draught.

I've just been living from day to day. Waiting for something or someone else to change the situation." His eyes studied her face, looking for a reaction to his next words. "I think I need to make a real decision. I believe I need to take action on my own.

I had no idea what to do with this unexpected life.

She thinks you will succeed. But whether you will know you have succeeded, or if the success will be the one you would have chosen for yourself, well, those are things no one can say now. But she knows you will succeed at whatever you are meant to do." p.613: Paragon to Brashen (about Mother)

All of us stand on the edge of the future; why venture off the precipice?

All life was danger and death was the only way to be safe.

Do not you sense it? A crossroads, a vertex, a vortex. All paths change from here.

Silly me. To think there was such a thing as a safe place in the world.

Suspense was an excellent tool for keeping powerful people off balance.

is deceived about what is offered by the other. What danger do you fear here, Tom?

Time. I was trapped in it, fenced into a tiny piece of now that was the only time I could influence. All the soons and tomorrows I might plan were ghost things that might be snatched from me at any moment. Intentions were nothing. Now was all I had.

I won't watch you die. I don't intend to die. Does anyone?

I suppose I cannot blame you for doubting me. I could scarcely believe it myself at first. I found all sorts of ways to deny it and explain it away. But it wouldn't stay gone.

How long? I asked, and then remembered that speech came from my mouth. 'How long?

How can I know what I'll do, until I've done it? How can I say?

I don't know,' I said grimly. 'Oh,' she said. Then after a time, she added, 'When a man says that, it usually means, "No, I won't, but from time to time, I'll toy with the idea, so I can pretend I eventually intend to do it.

I couldn't tell him it would come out right, because I wasn't sure it would. I couldn't tell him that I'd trust his judgment, because I didn't. Then Hap found the words for both of us. "I love you, Tom. I'll keep trying." I sighed in relief. "Me, too. I love you, and I'll keep trying.

Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.

When in doubt chicken out.

Failure is usually boring. It is the credible but unrealized threat of failure that is interesting.

coping with uncertainty makes us more creative, more resilient, and leads to genuine intellectual progress. It also makes us more tolerant, and this is the key to understanding what effect agnosticism should have on religious education.

You cannot know" he said simply. "Very little is certain in this life, my lady.