Quotes About Uncertainty

I never worry about tomorrow. For instance I know I am going to have to leave here very soon, and I haven't the faintest idea where I'll end up or how I shall earn my living, but I know that something will turn up. If one burdens the future with one's worries, it cannot grow organically. I am filled with confidence, not that I shall succeed in worldly things, but that even when things go badly for me I shall still find life good and worth living.

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever really lost.

Never think you've seen the last of anything.

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

As the sun disappeared below the horizon and its glare no longer reflected off a glassy sea, I thought of how beautiful the sunsets always were in the Pacific. They were even more beautiful than over Mobile Bay. Suddenly a thought hit me like a thunderbolt. Would I live to see the sunset tomorrow?

How strange! Am I already dead?"

I have long considered it one of God's greatest mercies that the future is hidden from us. If it were not, life would surely be unbearable.

My uncle Ernie didn't believe in God. At least that's what he said. But he always Went to church on Christmas. Which I thought Seriously compromised his atheism.

The exact meaning of Jeremiah is not certain: it may mean "the LORD exalts"; it may mean "the LORD hurls." What is certain is that "the LORD," the personal name of God, is in his name.

from chapter 16, "Catacombs Presbyterian Church"): "When is this going to happen? How long do we have to wait? When does construction begin? Jesus's response was 'It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.' In other words, it's none of your business. Your question is irrelevant. That kind of information is of no use to you. It would probably confuse you, might discourage you, and would certainly distract you.

Traveling can never be taken for granted, no matter how meticulous the preparations.

We cannot know whether a theory formulated in terms of mathematical concepts is uniquely appropriate. We are in a position similar to that of a man who was provided with a bunch of keys and who, having to open several doors in succession, always hit on the right key on the first or second trial. He became skeptical concerning the uniqueness of the coordination between keys and doors.

Our own era is one haunted by the shadow of futurity, precisely because there is no future.

Two kinds of pessimism: "The end is near" and "Will this never end?

When someone casually asks me "How are you doing?", I sometimes find myself hesitating, as if caught in a micro-catatonia. The question is both petty and cosmic at the same time. Then I remember: just say "Fine.

The only philosophy worth pursuing is the one that poses questions without answers. Anything less is hubris. But this can never be proved – by definition.

Things should be good, I tell myself, but they're, well, not-so-good. Nothing seems to make sense – and it should (shouldn't it?). Granted, things weren't exactly perfect before, but now they're definitely worse (…or so it seems). And this on top of the simplest of things: having to live a life.

Happiness" is the feeling you have just before something goes wrong.

Happiness in myself makes me apprehensive.

Chi vuole respirare a grandi zaffate la musa del nostro tempo la precarietà può passare di qui senza affrettarsi è il colpo secco quello che fa orrore non già l'evanescenza il dolce afflato del nulla ...

Some people choose their precarity - evidence that precarity is not just a condition of our time, but a response to it. The precariat includes people who have forgone stable employment and retirement savings for temp work and travel and an uncertain future. Their very existence is unsettling, suggesting, as it does, that there might be something worth more than security.

When I stepped onto the bridge over the Iowa River and stood looking out across the water, I knew I was home. I was wrong about that, as it turns out. And I know now that my certainty was based on a series of troubling misconceptions, but it would be years before I would lose the comfort that certainty gave me.

I don't know…." He has been saying this over and over, ending every thought with it. Finally I ask him, "What don't you know?" He pauses. "Lots of things. Your favorite color, for example.

The story isn't over, it isn't foreclosed, and that's the point: there's a tiny chink into the future that might be wedged open.