Quotes About Uncertainty

The seeds of doubt grow like weeds when given enough sun. Enough water. Enough nurturing.

Steve doesn't work here anymore." Madeline sat in the cul-de-sac, trying to absorb the words she'd just heard. "I haven't seen Steve since he was laid off. That was at the beginning of September. About six months ago.

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. —E. L. DOCTOROW

There has to be a measure of faith. That's what this business is all about: trusting in something that may never show up, that you have no concrete proof of.

The violent reaction on the recent development of modern physics can only be understood when one realises that here the foundations of physics have started moving and that this motion has caused the feeling that the ground would be cut from science.

It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.

What happens depends on our way of observing it or on the fact that we observe it.

Am I in the wrong place here, or in the wrong life? Did I not recognize, as I sat in a train that raced past a station and did not stop, that I was on the wrong train, and did I not learn from the conductor that the train would not stop at the next station, either, a hundred kilometers away, and did he not also admit to me, whispering with his hand shielding his mouth, that the train would not stop again at all?

Since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer… we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

The more precisely we determine the position [of an electron], the more imprecise is the determination of velocity at this instant, and vice versa.

Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I am doing.

God is holding this planet, I'm wondering when he decides to let go.

Anybody looking for a quiet life has picked the wrong century to born in.

and it is our fear of our regrets that causes our fear of the visitors.

When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.

I don't know what the future of my career holds, but I know that whatever is over the horizon, the road I've traveled to get here is like those interstates in Texas: everything can look the same, and it can feel like you're not going anywhere, until you suddenly get where you're going and realize that you've been traveling for a long time.

Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we're afraid to do it. Taking a chance and stepping beyond the safety of the world we've always known is the only way to grow, though and without risk there is no reward.

I craved for the past, resented the present, and dreaded the future.

For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us.

Don't let me think.

Everybody's dying, she said. Just pick a disease.

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous—and it is also essential.

Bernoulli observed that most people dislike risk (the chance of receiving the lowest possible outcome), and if they are offered a choice between a gamble and an amount equal to its expected value they will pick the sure thing. In fact a risk-averse decision maker will choose a sure thing that is less than expected value, in effect paying a premium to avoid the uncertainty.