Quotes About Uncertainty

And this means that time is a mystery, and not even a thing, and no one has ever solved the puzzle of what time is, exactly. and so, if you get lost in time it is like being lost in a desert, except that you can't see the desert because it is not a thing. And this is why I like timetables, because they make sure you don't get lost in time

And it means that sometimes thing are so complicated that it is impossible to predict what they are going to do next, but they are only obeying really simple rules.

It exasperated her sometimes. The way men could be so sure of themselves. They put words together like sheds or shelves and you could stand on them they were so solid. And those feelings which overwhelmed you in the small hours turned to smoke.

I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.

The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog...I decided the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.

He had never spoken to Uncle Richard, but he knew that he was a radiologist who put tubes into people's groins and pushed them up into their brains to clear blockages like chimney sweeps did and this was a glorious idea.

And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end.

intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions.

So often these days she seemed to hover between worlds, none of them wholly real.

You look around and it occurs to you that this isn't real, this is only a memory, that you could let go and topple into that great windy nothing and it wouldn't matter. What frightens you is that for a couple of seconds you can't remember where the present is and how to get back there.

Es mejor saber que una cosa buena va a pasar, como un eclipse, o que te regalen un microscopio por Navidad, que saber que una cosa mala va a pasar, como que te pongan un empaste o tener que ir a Francia. Pero creo que lo peor de todo es no saber si lo que va a pasar es una cosa buena o una cosa mala.

What he felt mostly was a relentless, grinding dread which rumbled and thundered and made the world dark, like those spaceships in science-fiction films whose battle-scorched fuselages slid onto the screen and kept on sliding onto the screen because they were, in fact, several thousand times larger than you expected when all you could see was the nose cone. The

They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.

a veces las cosas son tan complicadas que es imposible predecir qué va a pasar a continuación, pero en realidad obedecen a unas reglas muy sencillas. Y eso significa que, a veces, una población entera de ranas, o de gusanos, o de gente, puede morir sin razón alguna, sólo porque así es como funcionan los números.

Loving someone means taking the risk that they might fuck up your nicely ordered little life. And you don't want to fuck up your nicely ordered little life, do you?

No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile.

Why do you think great leaders and great orations are coincident with wars, revolutions, and the founding or ending of governments and states? Common interests then are so clear that speeches are effortlessly drawn, but at present neither the facts nor the consequences are sufficiently clear to make oratory legitimate. This is the kind of war that will wind on and make fools of its partisans and opponents both.

Don't worry about things that you simply cannot know. Let them fall back and recede like the foam pushed aside by the flanks of a ship. Leave them behind and let your heart power on.

No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding. Did I? For, if I did, I was wrong.

Fear, delight, and being twenty were made for each other:

still, if it's hot enough I'll lie in the sun and feel at least three types of despair: despair that life is mostly gone and I've wasted it; despair that I cannot feel now what I thought I would if I saw all my struggles through; and despair that, because I don't know any other course to take, nothing will change.

Better a bird in hand than hell knows what in the bush.

He was not sure to what he had to be loyal. But he assumed that this uncertainty, like the other torments suffered by his fellow lunatics, would someday vanish.