Certainty Quotes - Page 34

• Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.

  John Stuart Mill

  Destiny, Men, Purpose

  John Stuart Mill (1865). “On Liberty”, p.11

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are two modes of knowledge: through argument and through experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but it does not cause certainty nor remove doubts that the mind may rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience.

  Roger Bacon

  Education, Two, Doubt

  34 Copy quote

• The first indication that we are killing our dreams is lack of time.
  The second indication of the death of our dreams is certainty.
  The third indication that our dreams are dead is peace.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dream, Inspiration, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• Certainty ends inquiry.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Learning, Inquiry, Ends

  11 Copy quote

• My only complaint with 'Dickie' Bird is that he requires a degree of certainty that is almost neurotic; like the man who has to keep going to the front door to make certain that he's locked it.

  Mike Brearley

  Men, Doors, Umpires

  5 Copy quote

• Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

  George Eliot

  Play, Needs, Inward

  George Eliot (2016). “Daniel Deronda: Top Novelist Focus”, p.243, 谷月社

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great man, who was convinced that the truths of political and moral science are capable of the same certainty as those that form the system of physical science, even in those branches like astronomy that seem to approximate mathematical certainty. He cherished this belief, for it led to the consoling hope that humanity would inevitably make progress toward a state of happiness and improved character even as it has already done in its knowledge of the truth.

  Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet

  Character, Science, Men

  27 Copy quote

• Gauss replied, when asked how soon he expected to reach certain mathematical conclusions, that he had them long ago, all he was worrying about was how to reach them!

  Rene Dubos

  Math, Long Ago, Worry

  6 Copy quote

• I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."

  Paul Halmos

  Math, Class, Numbers

  12 Copy quote

• Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Inspirational, Life, Confusion

  Leonardo (da Vinci), Irma A. Richter, Thereza Wells (2008). “Notebooks”, p.9, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Living by faith isn't living with certainty. It's trusting God in spite of unanswered questions and unresolved doubts.

  Rick Warren

  Doubt, Unanswered Questions, Trust In God

  Twitter post from Jan 02, 2014

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

  Julian Barnes

  Giving, Decision, Enough Time

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.93, Random House

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only things of certainty are Death and Taxes.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Taxes

  4 Copy quote

• I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  House, Middle, Heard

  Maggie Stiefvater (2014). “Shiver Series (Shiver, Linger, Forever, Sinner)”, p.567, Scholastic Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties.

  Michael Faraday

  Speculation

  The Homiletic Review, April 1896.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• We've created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets - and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near certainty that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan.

  Atul Gawande

  Winning, Dollars, Tickets

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.92, Metropolitan Books

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• A vital part of philosophizing is learning to trust one's own intuitivist intelligence, getting one's center of gravity back between one's feet. In our culture-so outer-directed, "objective" or extraverted-this is already heresy. This is self-mastering thinking, centered in what has been well-tested as certainties: autarkia or self-rule.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Thinking, Feet

  4 Copy quote

• If you're invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.

  Pema Chodron

  Planets, Ifs, Security

  9 Copy quote

• Certainty and similar states of ‘knowing what we know’ arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.

  Robert A. Burton

  Like Love, Knowing, Brain

  Robert A. Burton, M.D., M.D. (2008). “On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not”, p.7, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world is certainty a sudden place.

  Carson McCullers

  World

  4 Copy quote

• The image of the presence, whatever it was, waiting there for him to go -this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short - he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.

  Henry James

  Fear, Waiting, Risk

  4 Copy quote

• Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures,
  even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that,
  when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved.

  Pope Francis

  Light, Joy, Done

  Pope Francis (2014). “The Joy of the Gospel”, p.6, BookBaby

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no certainty of what will or won't be in our lives. All we have is this moment. The last is gone, the next isn't here yet.

  Curt Mega

  Gone, Lasts, Next

  8 Copy quote

• The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately
  represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Good Luck, Reality, Thinking

  "Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence". Interview with Jeffrey Elliot, 1980.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Action based on hope just felt better than the paralysis of certainty.

  Christopher Moore

  Action, Paralysis, Felt

  Christopher Moore (2009). “Coyote Blue: A Novel”, p.260, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source