Certainty Quotes - Page 17

• Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.

  Voltaire

  Motivational, Stupidity, Doubt

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• In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.

  George Leonard

  Life, Adversity, Order

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• There were certain great principles involved in the organization of this earth, and one was that there might be a place provided whereon the children of our Heavenly Father could live and propagate their species and have bodies formed for the spirits to inhabit who were the children of God; for . . . He is the God and Father of the spirits of all flesh.

  John Taylor

  Children, Father, Organization

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• Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.

  John Adams

  Life, Years, President

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.281

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• The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.

  William Law

  Christian, Religious, Soul

  William Law (1749). “I. The spirit of prayer; or, the soul rising out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity. In two parts ; 7,II. The way to divine knowledge; being several dialogues between Humanus, Academicus, Rusticus, and Theophilus”, p.4

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• Real dialogue is where two or more people become willing to suspend their certainty in each other's presence.

  David Bohm

  Real, Two, People

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• The infinite reservoir of future grace is flowing back through the present into the ever-growing pool of past grace. The inexhaustible reservoir is invisible except through the promises. But the ever-enlarging pool of past grace is visible; and God means for the certainty and beauty and depth to strengthen our faith in future grace.

  John Piper

  Mean, Past, Grace

  John Piper (2012). “Future Grace, Revised Edition: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God”, p.100, Multnomah

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• He who has heard the same thing told by 12,000 eye-witnesses has only 12,000 probabilities, which are equal to one strong probability, which is far from certain.

  Voltaire

  Strong, Eye, Math

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• We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.

  James Thurber

  Play, Self, Certainty Of Death

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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• Devotion to the facts will always give the pleasures of recognition; adherence to the rules of design, the pleasures of order and certainty.

  Kenneth Clark

  Order, Giving, Design

  Kenneth Clark (1950). “Landscape Painting”

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• It seemed perfectly possible that, in spite of my certainty of my own genius, I might die of some illness, or perhaps even in a street accident, before I had ever glimpsed the meaning of life. My moods of happiness and self-confidence convinced me that I had a "destiny" to become a famous writer, and to be remembered as one of the most important thinkers of the century.

  Colin Wilson

  Self Confidence, Destiny, Important

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• If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.

  Henry Miller

  Heaven, Found, Ifs

  Henry Miller (1969). “Mémoires, Plaidoiries Et Documents”, p.192, New Directions Publishing

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• Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one; and if we don't see this, it's because we are blinding ourselves to it.

  David Bohm

  Vacuums, Matter, Consciousness

  David Bohm, Lee Nichol (2003). “The Essential David Bohm”, p.149, Psychology Press

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• In its efforts to learn as much as possible about nature, modern physics has found that certain things can never be "known" with certainty. Much of our knowledge must always remain uncertain. The most we can know is in terms of probabilities.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Effort, Physics, Modern

  The Feynman Lectures on Physics (pp. 6-1 1)

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• Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Years, Enemy, Lasts

  "Anthony Hopkins Interview 'The Rite'; Plus Updates on 'Thor', 360, Composing Music, Painting, and a lot More". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. January 26, 2011.

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• Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.

  James G. Frazer

  Buddhism, Blow, Roots

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• Don't give us your doubts, gives us your certainties, for we have doubts enough of our own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Giving, Doubt, Enough

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• What I need most of all is certainty.

  Milan Kundera

  Needs

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• I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Infinite, Absurd, Walking

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• The only certainty about following the crowd is that you will all get there together.

  Mychal Wynn

  Together, Following The Crowd, Crowds

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• Digital television is no longer a probability, it is a certainty.

  Tessa Jowell

  Television, Digital, Probability

  "BBC footing digital bill for poor". Speech at the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention, www.imdb.com. September 15, 2005.

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• An aphorism is an extreme synthesis of thesis and antithesis, theory and practice, it's a mixture of intuition and observation, hypothesis and illusions of certainty and probability, history and stupidity.

  William C. Brown

  Practice, Stupidity, Intuition

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• One of the most basic and pervasive social processes is the sorting and labeling of things, activities, and people... Sorting and labeling processes involve a trade-off of costs and benefits. In general, the more finely the sorting is done, the greater the benefits - and the costs... Sorting and labeling, whether of people or of things, is a sorting and labeling of probabilities rather than of certainties.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Cost, Done

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• both doubt and certainty are as contagious as the common cold

  Kathryn Schulz

  Doubt, Common, Cold

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• Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric.

  Dana Spiotta

  People, Simplicity, Ease

  Source: www.believermag.com

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