Quotes About Uncertainty

Admittedly, it is preposterous to suggest that stock speculation is like coin-flipping. I know that there is more skill to stock speculation. What I have never been able to determine is - how much more?

No recuerdo donde leí que "la muerte debilita nuestra confianza en la vida al demostrar que al final todo es igualmente fútil ante la oscuridad definitiva". Sí, "fútil" es la palabra exacta.

Did I really want or need to know? What difference would it make if he were dead or alive, since dead or alive I should never see him again? But could I be certain? Was it completely and utterly out of the question for the door to open and for him to walk in? And wasn't I even now listening for his footstep?

He neither knew where he was, nor whither he was going, he could have no plan because he could foresee nothing, everything happening was inevitable and unexpected, he was an act in a whole chain of acts; and, though his movements had to conform to those of others, spontaneously, as part of some infinitely flexible plan, which he could not comprehend very clearly even in regard to its immediate object, he could rely on no one but himself.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.

She better not die this time," I guess I said.

There were discrepancies. Sometimes

The eyes of the Englishman were open and stared back with frank candour. Except for the irises, which were of flecked grey so that they seemed smoky like the hoar mist on a winter's morning. It took Rodin a few seconds to realize that they had no expression at all. Whatever thoughts did go on behind the smoke-screen, nothing came through, and Rodin felt a worm of unease. Like all men created by systems and procedures, he did not like the unpredictable and therefore the uncontrollable.

It is always tempting to wonder what would have happened if … or if not. Usually it is a futile exercise, for what might have been is the greatest of all the mysteries.

They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind.

Between two stools one sits on the ground.

Am I falling in love? She thought, is it safe to do so with this man? She thought, I don't need to answer.

to feel the anguish of waiting for the next moment and of taking part in the complex current (of affairs) not knowing that we are headed toward ourselves, through millions of stone beings - of bird beings - of star beings - of microbe beings - of fountain beings toward ourselves

Never stop because you are afraid - you are never so likely to be wrong.

Hope is a rickety craft to trust one's self to. I

Then one day followed the next without the basic questions of life ever being solved.

Deine These war, dass die menschliche Unvollkommenheit, die Tatsache, dass wir die Handlungsweise anderer nie mit Sicherheit vorauszusagen, und dass wir ferner den Zufall, der in alles hineinspielt, nicht in unsere Überlegung einzubauen vermögen, der Grund sei der die meisten Verbrechen zwangsläufig zutage fördern müsse.

solo la non conoscenza del futuro ci rende sopportabile il presente. Mi sono sempre stupito e continuo a stupirmi immensamente che gli uomini siano tanto smaniosi di conoscere il futuro. Sembra quasi che preferiscano l'infelicità alla felicità.

What is going to happen? What will the future bring? I do not know, I have no presentiment. When a spider flings itself from a fixed point down into its consequences, it continually sees before it an empty space in which it can find no foothold, however much it stretches. So it is with me; before me is continually an empty space, and I am propelled by a consequence that lies behind me. This life is turned around and dreadful, not to be endured.

One should never know too precisely whom one has married.

The state of ambiguity - that messy, greasy, mixed-up, confused, and awful situation you're living through right now - is enlightenment itself.

Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.

We just need to feel we know, or we can't rest. And yet much of life is unknowable and will remain so. Lots