Certainty Quotes - Page 24

• A testimony is a conviction, a quiet inward certainty of the reality of the living God, of the divinity of His Beloved Son, of the restoration of Their work in this time. It demands that we do what He has asked us to do.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Son, Reality, Demand

  4 Copy quote

• The fatal hour of this ancient game is approaching. In its modern form this game will soon die a drawing death - the inevitable victory of certainty and mechanization will leave its stamp on the fate of chess.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Fate, Games, Drawing

  5 Copy quote

• Think about what it feels like when you interact with someone who makes you notice what's good about yourself (raising your status), who is clear with his expectations of you (increasing certainty), who lets you make decisions (increasing autonomy), who connects with you on a human level (increasing relatedness), and who treats you fairly.

  David Rock

  Motivational, Thinking, Expectations

  9 Copy quote

• Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation.

  William James

  Inspirational, Education, Morning

  William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.127, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mind, Literature, Inquiring

  "Prejudices Second Series".

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• He wondered how he could ever have thought of the planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Islands, Air

  4 Copy quote

• Even when the universe made it quite clear to me that I was mistaken in my certainties ... I did not break. The shattering of my sureties did not shatter me.

  Lucille Clifton

  Adversity, Break, Made

  42 Copy quote

• You have to run risks. There are no certainties in war. There is a precipice on either side of you - a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.

  Winston Churchill

  Running, War, Adversity

  Winston Churchill (1952). “War Speeches: From September 11, 1943 to August 16, 1945”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hope is called the anchor of the soul because it gives stability to the Christian life. But hope is not simply a 'wish' I wish that such-and-such would take place rather, it is that which latches on to the certainty of the promises of the future that God has made.

  R. C. Sproul

  Christian, Hope, Anchors

  10 Copy quote

• Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers [who play on a par with a master]. There are, however, a quarter of a million chessplayers who annually spend no fewer than 200 hours on chess without making any progress. Without going into any further calculations, I can assert with a high degree of certainty that nowadays we achieve only a fraction of what we are capable of achieving.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Player, Two, Special

  59 Copy quote

• The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.

  Eric Hoffer

  Disappointment, Empty Life, Achievement

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• And why do we reduce the beauty of relating to relationship? Why are we in such a hurry? - because to relate is insecure, and relationship is a security, relationship has a certainty. Relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay and in the morning we say good-bye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don't allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun.

  Rajneesh

  Relationship, Morning, Insecure

  4 Copy quote

• Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility.

  Ellen Langer

  Wise, Growth, Mind

  Ellen J. Langer (2009). “Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility”, p.24, Ballantine Books

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• The speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.

  Audre Lorde

  Love You, Creativity, Missing

  189 Copy quote

• Those who say they dislike dogma, or 'certainty', tend to be liars, hypocrites, or simply wrong. What they really dislike is the dogma of those they disagree with. A society that was certain, certain beyond all certainty, that putting its citizens in death camps was wrong, would never put people in death camps. Such things are only possible when you're open to new ideas.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Liars, Knowledge, Hypocrite

  4 Copy quote

• To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

  Richard Miller

  Inspirational, Thinking, Fool

  8 Copy quote

• A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Now suppose both death and hell were utterly defeated.  Suppose the fight was fixed.  Suppose God took you on a crystal ball trip into your future and you saw with indubitable certainty that despite everything — your sin, your smallness, your stupidity — you could have free for the asking your whole crazy heart’s deepest desire: heaven, eternal joy.  Would you not return fearless and singing?  What can earth do to you, if you are guaranteed heaven?  To fear the worst earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny — less, a scratch on a penny.

  Peter Kreeft

  Crazy, Heart, Loss

  Peter Kreeft (1989). “Heaven, the Heart's Deepest Longing”, p.82, Ignatius Press

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw several ways, and are ready to strangle one another: For the main Evidence of the Christian Doctrine, which is Miracles, is resolved into the certainty of Sense, but this Evidence is clear and point blank against Transubstantiation.

  John Tillotson

  Christian, Believe, Men

  John Tillotson (1685). “A discourse against transubstantiation”, p.40

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Struggle, Majority, Lasts

  13 Copy quote

• I can't keep from fooling around with our irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure knowingly to mix up two and three dimensionalities, flat and spatial, and to make fun of gravity.

  M. C. Escher

  Fun, Two, Example

  "On Being a Graphic Artist" by M. C. Escher, 1981.

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• Phases of the creative process: Preparation-gathering impressions Incubation-letting go of certainties Immersion/Illumination-creative intervention/risk Revision-conscious structuring and editing of creative material.

  Gail Sheehy

  Letting Go, Creativity, Illumination

  23 Copy quote

• I have throughout been curious about how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Curiosity, Degrees, Curious

  7 Copy quote

• All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self. What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself - a troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required. I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.

  Philip Roth

  Player, Self, Identity

  "The Counterlife". Book by Philip Roth, 1986.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Politics have always covered two distinct kinds of problems: problems of administrative routine, and those that may be called 'questions of the moment.' A question of the moment is, indeed, a substitute for some notion, such as the idea of God, or hereditary monarchy, or national glory, that has hitherto acted as a symbol of human co-ordination. It provides no new positive certainty to replace the discredited certainty, but is what the name implies: the raising of a question which the old certainty no longer answers.

  Laura Riding

  Names, Ideas, Two

  "Poetry and Politics". "The Common Asphodel". Book by Robert Graves, 1949.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source