Certainty Quotes - Page 12

• Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Truth, Slender, Falsehood

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2015). “Thoughts on Art and Life: "Behind the Genius"”, p.41, eKitap Projesi

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• I have a certainty about eternity that is a wonderful thing, and I thank God for giving me that certainty. I do not fear death. I may fear a little bit about the process, but not death itself, because I think the moment that my spirit leaves this body, I will be in the presence of the Lord.

  Billy Graham

  Death, Thinking, Giving

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• Without question it may be said of Vancouver that her position, geographically, is Imperial to a degree, that her possibilities are enormous, and that with but a feeble stretch of the imagination those possibilities might wisely be deemed certainties.

  Homer

  Imagination, Degrees, Vancouver

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• When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

  Bertrand Russell

  Party, Thinking, Political

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.22, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life! - In tragic hints here see what evermore Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!

  George Meredith

  Horse, Moving, Ocean

  George Meredith (1912). “Poems of George Meredith”, p.257, Library of Alexandria

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• Since reasoning , or inference, the principal subject of logic, is an operation which usually takes place by means of words , and in complicated cases can take place in no other way: those who have not a thorough insight into both the signification and purpose of words, will be under chances, amounting almost to certainty, of reasoning or inferring incorrectly.

  John Stuart Mill

  Mean, Way, Purpose

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive: Mill's Works”, p.20, VM eBooks

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• Death, in its certainty, is exacting its due respect and repose before it takes my hand.

  Susan Abulhawa

  Hands, Take My Hand, Dues

  Susan Abulhawa (2010). “Mornings in Jenin”, p.233, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires - and gives rise to - deep feelings of faith.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Giving, Feelings, Looks

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• The man who saves time by galloping loses it by missing his way; the shepherd who hurries his flock to get them home spends the night on the mountain looking for the lost; economy does not consist in haste, but in certainty.

  Ramsay MacDonald

  Home, Night, Men

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• We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and we could, at last, make others take us seriously.
  In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

  Benjamin Franklin

  World, Lasts, Said

  Letter to Jean Baptiste Le Roy, 13 November 1789

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• ... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.

  William James

  Tolls, Bells, Truth Is

  William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.109, University of Illinois Press

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• The Holy Ghost is not a Sceptic, and He has not inscribed in our hearts uncertain opinions, but, rather, affirmations of the strongest sorts.

  Martin Luther

  Heart, Opinion, Affirmation

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• God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts.

  Sylvia Plath

  Doubt, Ricochet

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.78, Anchor

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• People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?
  A man cannot know himself better than by attending to the feelings of his heart and to his external actions, from which he may with tolerable certainty judge "what manner of person he is." I have therefore determined to keep a daily journal.

  James Boswell

  Heart, Kids, Men

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• Out of the element of participation follows the certainty of faith; out of the element of separation follows the doubt in faith. And each is essential for the nature of faith. Sometimes certainty conquers doubt, but it cannot eliminate doubt. The conquered of today may become the conqueror of tomorrow. Sometimes doubt conquers faith, but it still contains faith. Otherwise it would be indifference.

  Paul Tillich

  Faith, Doubt, Essentials

  Paul Tillich (1958). “Dynamics of faith”

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• Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus "theoretically," is to uselanguage in a Pickwickian sense. In practice, and in fact, mathematics is not exempt from that liability to error that affects everything that man does.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Men, Errors, Practice

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1992). “Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898”, p.167, Harvard University Press

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• If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I should have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it!

  Eleanora Duse

  Movie, Art, Mistake

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• I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties.

  Isaac Newton

  Conjecture

  Sir Isaac Newton (2016). “New Theory about Light and Colour”, p.10, Library of Alexandria

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• I know with certainty, that [an honest man] is not to put his hand into the fire, and hold it there, till it be consumed: And thisevent, I think I can foretell with the same assurance, as that, if he throw himself out at the window, and meet with no obstruction, he will not remain a moment suspended in the air.

  David Hume

  Men, Thinking, Fire

  David Hume (1894). “An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding: And An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals”

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• But 'the physical level of rigor' is higher on certainty than the logical one, since reproducible experiments are more reliable than anybody's, be it Hilbert's, Einstein's or Gödel's intuition.

  Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov

  Science, Intuition, Levels

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• The whole social structure is now tumbling down, dethroning its God, undermining all its certainties. All this, wonderfully enough, is being done in the name of the health, wealth, and happiness of all mankind.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Christian, Religious, Tumbling Down

  Malcolm Muggeridge (2005). “Conversion: The Spiritual Journey of a Twentieth Century Pilgrim”, p.61, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• In my life, the only certainty is to be uncertain. I'm an unbeliever who believes in skepticism. I'm only sure about being unsure.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Believe, Uncertain, Skepticism

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• Know with certainty that there is a God, and that there exists a world beyond this one - the world of souls.

  Ostad Elahi

  God, Soul, World

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• The world now has a new kind of hero, one who listens more than speaks, who preaches in riddles not in certainties, a leader who doesn't show his face, who says his mask is really a mirror. And in the Zapatistas, we have not one dream of a revolution, but a dreaming revolution.

  Naomi Klein

  Dream, Hero, Mirrors

  "The unknown icon" by Naomi Klein, www.theguardian.com. March 3, 2001.

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• The Divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more propositions [than we can ever know]. But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty.

  Galileo Galilei

  Believe, Doe, Divine

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