Quotes About Uncertainty

Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom. LATIN PROVERB

Religious sects, established and marginal, and some newly invented for the purpose, were dissecting the theological implications of the Message. Some thought it was from God, and some from the Devil. Astonishingly, some were even unsure.

E]ven laws of Nature are not absolutely certain. There may be new circumstances never before examined – inside black holes, say, or within the electron, or close to the speed of light – where even our vaunted laws of Nature break down and, however valid they may be in ordinary circumstances, need correction.

The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall. We are lost in a great darkness, and there's no one to send out a search party. Given so harsh a reality, of course we're tempted to shut our eyes and pretend that we're safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream.

Every time a scientific paper presents a bit of data, it's accompanied by an error bar – a quiet but insistent reminder that no knowledge is complete or perfect. It's a calibration of how much we trust what we think we know. If the error bars are small, the accuracy of our empirical knowledge is high; if the error bars are large, then so is the uncertainty in our knowledge.

There's a certain discipline involved. We can't just go off shouting 'little green men' every time we detect something we don't at first understand, because we're going to look mighty silly when it turns out to be something else. Special cautions are necessary when the stakes are high. We are not obliged to make up our minds before the evidence is in. It's permitted to not be sure.

It is on this world that we developed our passion for exploring the Cosmos, and it is here that we are, in some pain and with no guarantees, working out our destiny.

There seem to be many people who simply wish to be told an answer, any answer, and thereby avoid the burden of keeping two mutually exclusive possibilities in their heads at the same time.

When I say I'm an agnostic, I only mean that the evidence isn't in. There isn't compelling evidence that God exists—at least your kind of god—and there isn't compelling evidence that he doesn't.

Claro que si uno tuviera un receptor con paso de banda estrecha, y escuchara solo un mínimo margen de frecuencias, estaría obligado a aceptar la constante de tiempo larga. Jamás podríamos detectar una modulación rápida. Eso era una simple consecuencia del Teorema Integral de Fourier, estrechamente vinculado con el Principio de Incertidumbre de Heisenberg.

la certeza absoluta siempre se nos escapará.

Cada vez que un estudio científico presenta algunos datos, va acompañado de un margen de error: un recordatorio discreto pero insistente de que ningún conocimiento es completo o perfecto.

La ausencia de pruebas no es prueba de ausencia.

Absence Of Evidence Is Not Evidence Of Absence

Pero la vida no sabe a donde se dirige. No tiene un plan a largo plazo. No tiene una finalidad en mente. No tiene una finalidad en mente. No hay mente que abrigue una finalidad. (...) La vida es derrochadora, ciega, indiferente en este nivel a las nociones de justicia.

We can never possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

I felt a great depression, probably because I never believed that anything would continue, would hold. I never thought my advance would maintain its ground. I always thought there would be a collapse immediately after the advance.

Her delicate beauty must avoid a strong light. There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth

No one knows enough to worry.

The real truth, that dare not speak itself, is that no one is in control. Absolutely no one.

Worrying is betting against yourself.

Their gazes met. His eyes swept her in a velvet caress, uncertainty stamped on his features. The night loomed between them, as dark and impenetrable as his eyes. Rowena had to look away. She forced herself to remember how he had used his body and her need as weapons to weave a punishing net of pleasure.

What are you doing? she whispered, torn between hope and alarm. Making the biggest mistake of my life, he said grimly, before dragging her into his arms and claiming her lips in a wild and desperate kiss that stole both her breath and heart away.

Some decisions cannot be made in advance of the time that will demand them. We cannot always anticipate the way in which things will happen and therefore cannot anticipate what we will do. We must accept that.