Quotes About Uncertainty

everything – now sank beneath a familiar cloud, settling grey and thick, where every shape was but hinted at, where he was lost. As lost as he had been, as lost as any and every mortal soul, no matter how blustery its claims to certainty, to faith. And yet…and yet it was a warm cloud, shot through with precious things: his love for his wife, his children; his wonder at their lives, the changes that came to them day by day. He found he was weeping, even as he climbed to his feet.

Returning to… sanity? Perhaps. But Heboric Ghost Hands had no firm grasp of what sanity was, what it looked like, felt like, smelled like. It might be that he had never known. – TB 486

Ascendancy was but one of the countless mysteries of the world, a world where uncertainty ruled all—god and mortal alike—and its rules were impenetrable.

I, Sergeant Gesler of the 5th squad in the 9th Company of the 8th Legion, swear by the two Lords of Summer, Fener and Treach, that the creature before me is a natural, unaltered Birdshit scorpion – even though I know there's something about it I'm not seeing and I'm about to lose my life's savings on the Sergeants' Wager.

It is my feeling,' she said, haltingly, 'that a faith that delivers perfect answers to every question is not a true faith, for its only purpose is to satisfy, to ease the mind and so end its questing.

Who was Harllo? The man walked to his horse and swung himself into the saddle. He collected the reins. 'I'm not sure,' he said after a moment's consideration. 'The way it started, well, it seemed . . .' he hesitated, and then said, 'he was a boy nobody loved.

Here be the mountains vanishing in the mists, never to return. Here be the rivers sinking into the sands, and these are the sands that never rest. And the sky that looks down and sees nothing. Here, aye, is the world behind me, for I was never much of a map-maker, never much the surveyor of deeds.

Hope persists, and its voice is compassion, and honest doubt.

Everyone saw her as such a capable person, and all the while she asked herself: capable of what? Will I ever find out? When is it my turn?

Bugg's Construction will be the first major enterprise to collapse.' 'And how many will it drag down with it?' 'No telling. Three, maybe four.' 'I thought you said there was no telling.' 'So don't tell anyone.' 'Good idea. Bugg

You dream that with memories will come knowledge, and from knowledge, understanding. But for every answer you find, a thousand new questions arise. All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we're going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.

The trouble with Ascendants is that they try to rig every game. Of course, we delight in . . . uncertainty." A

Out of your depth, Captain? Don't worry, every damn person here's out of their depth. Some know it, some don't. It's the ones who don't you got to worry about. Start with what's right in front of you and forget the rest for now. It'll show up in its own time.

You took us, you made us into something, but none of us knows what, or even what for.

The future, my friend, is ever turned away, even when it faces us.

I do not want certainty. In fact, certainty is the one thing I fear the most.

To see a dead body was to recoil, mind spinning a dust-devil of thoughts - that is not me - see the difference between us? That is not me, that is not me. No one I know, no one I have ever known. That is not me . . . but . . . it could be. So easily it could be.

The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.

The opportunity to die was everywhere, and it just wasn't surprising when that opportunity became an event.

Most argument, and in fact most conflict, has nothing to do with the present. It's always about the past or the future. People can't agree on the details of what has happened or is going to happen. But we rarely know what has happened, and we never know what is going to happen. What is really at dispute is how we will deal with not knowing.

I'm afraid of everything, of dying, of not dying. I'm afraid that it will stay like this forever, that this war isn't a war, but just how life will be.

determinism does not imply predictability.

At such small scales, space and time might seethe and roil at random. They might fluctuate like bubbling foam.

I'm drinking away the exam results that don't take me anywhere.