Quotes About Uncertainty

The fear came then. The shield wall is a terrible place. It is where a warrior makes his reputation, and reputation is dear to us. Reputation is honour, but to gain that honour a man must stand in the shield wall where death runs rampant. I had been in the shield wall at Cynuit and I knew the smell of death, the stink of it, the uncertainty of survival, the horror of the axes and swords and spears, and I feared it. And it was coming.

Just what do you plan to do, Sharpe? the Lieutenant asked. Don't know, sir. Won't know till we get there. You're going to the mine? Aye, sir. There'll be guards. Like as not. And only two of us. I can count, sir. Sharpe grinned. It's reading I find hard. But my letters are coming on, aren't they?

There is no sense. The past is a ship's wake etched on a gray sea, but the future has no mark.

So, with no real plan for my future and content to let fate

The spelling of place names in Anglo Saxon England was an uncertain business, with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and Lundres.

The spinners were watching me, waiting, needles poised, and unless I did their bidding then my fate would be failure.

People like mystery. They want nothing explained, because when things are explained then there is no hope left.

If you wait for certainty in war, lord king, you'll die waiting.

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered--sometimes it seemed to take forever--went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

A time is coming that is no longer the time that emerged from the death of communism, from the triumph of liberal values, and from the pronounced "end of history," an ending to which I never subscribed but that was beginning to take on a truly sinister face.

Verzweifelt hatte er sie gefragt, wie sie sich so sicher sein konnte, dass sie ihn nicht liebte. Ihre Worte darauf hatten ihm das Herz aus dem Leib geschnitten. »Weil ich dich nie vermisst habe, nachdem du gegangen warst.«

No one should know their fate too clearly. No life can flourish in the shadow of the future.

for humans, death meant the end of everything. They lived in a condition of uncertainty, and maybe that was what made their lives so valuable. No human knew what would happen to his soul after death, so they had to make the best of things in life. And

Verzweifelt hatte er sie gefragt, wie sie sich so sicher sein konnte, dass sie ihn nicht liebte. Ihre Worte darauf hatten ihm das Herz aus dem Leib geschnitten. ?Weil ich dich nie vermisst habe, nachdem du gegangen warst.?

I knew none of it then - if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in the air.

Sie hatten Angst vor dem Abschied, und zugleich versetzte sein Bevorstehen sie in eigentümliche Leichtigkeit. Sie waren nicht mehr im gemeinsamen und noch nicht im eigenen Leben, sie waren im Niemandsland.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.