Quotes About Uncertainty

So this is it, said Arthur, We are going to die. Yes, said Ford, except... no! Wait a minute! He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. What's this switch? he cried. What? Where? cried Arthur, twisting round. No, I was only fooling, said Ford, we are going to die after all.

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was. No, said the old man, that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

What's up? [asked Ford.] I don't know, said Marvin, I've never been there.

Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions.

If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.

I don't know what I'm looking for." "What not?" "Because … because … I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn't be able to look for them.

What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!

We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.

If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?

In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, if anything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory or extinction, one thing has never been in doubt - that you would at least know the answer when you were dead.

The light works, he said, indicating the window, the gravity works, he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. Anything else we have to take our chances with.

I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.

We're not obsessed by anything, you see, insisted Ford. ... And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win. I care about lots of things, said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty. Such as? Well, said the old man, life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords. Would you die for them? Fjords? blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. No. Well then. Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, Hang the sense of it, and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.

For as long as he could remember, he'd suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.

Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.

Sometimes if you received an answer, the question might be taken away.

Goosnargh, said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn't know what it should be.

I have terrible periods of lack of confidence. I just don't believe I can do it and no evidence to the contrary will sway me from that view.

The party and the Krikkit warship looked, in their writhings, a little like two ducks, one of which is trying to make a third duck inside the second duck, whilst the second duck is trying very hard to explain that it doesn't feel ready for a third duck right now, is uncertain that it would want any putative third duck anyway, and certainly not whilst it, the second duck, was busy flying.