Certainty Quotes - Page 39

• Passion. It can be used to describe the beauty of an earth-shaking meeting between two people, but it isn't just that. It's there in the excitement of the unexpected, in the desire to do something with real fervour, in the certainty that one is going to realise a dream. Passion sends us signals that guide us through our lives.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Dream, Real

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• I'm going to end a life that I thought could contain every kind of greatness but that in fact consisted only of my incapacity to really want to be great. Whenever I arrived at a certainty, I remembered that those with the greatest certainties are lunatics.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Greatness, Want, Facts

  Fernando Pessoa (2005). “The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive”

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• In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

  David Hume

  Wise, Men, Facts

  David Hume (1784). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.118

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• After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Exercise, Age, Ministry

  Pope Benedict XVI’s Resignation Speech, w2.vatican.va. February 10, 2013.

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• I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Change, War, Generations

  Woodrow Wilson (1919). “Addresses of President Wilson”

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• The fear of infinity is a form of myopia that destroys the possibility of seeing the actual infinite, even though it in its highest form has created and sustains us, and in its secondary transfinite forms occurs all around us and even inhabits our minds.

  Georg Cantor

  Mind, Myopia, Ontology

  "Infinity and the Mind". Book by Rudy Rucker, 1982.

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• But just as much as it is easy to find the differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not.

  Johann Bernoulli

  Education, Math, Derivatives

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• Certainty is a cruel mindset.

  Ellen Langer

  Ironic, Mindset

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

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• Be sure of the foundation of your life. Know why you live as you do. Be ready to give a reason for it. Do not, in such a matter as life, build an opinion or custom on what you guess is true. Make it a matter of certainty and science.

  Thomas Starr King

  Life, Giving, Foundation

  Thomas Starr King (1924). “Socrates: An Oration”

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• We never have 100 percent certainty. We never have it. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield.

  Gordon R. Sullivan

  Waiting, Climate, Happens

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• Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal

  William Lane Craig

  Unattainable, Ideals

  J. P. Moreland, William Lane Craig (2009). “Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview”, p.58, InterVarsity Press

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• After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldnt be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Trying, Done, Way

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• Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment

  Cesare Beccaria

  Punishment, Crime, Severity

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• The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. So long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Long, Leader

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• If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong.

  Joe Biden

  Chance, Absolute Certainty, Stills

  "MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski Gushingly Admits: Joe Biden Is 'Our Guy,' Also, 'I Love Him'". Interview with Rachel Burnett, www.newsbusters.org. July 19, 2010.

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• We move from the illusion of certainty, to the certainty of illusion

  John Bradshaw

  Inspirational, Moving, Illusion

  John Bradshaw (2013). “Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child”, p.59, Bantam

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• What I say is that the supreme and singular joy of making love resides in the certainty of doing evil.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Love, Evil, Joy

  David Paul, Charles Baudelaire (1996). “Poison and vision: poems and prose of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rimbaud”, Univ of Salzberg Pr

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• If we get total certainty, we get … bored out of our minds. So, God, in Her infinite wisdom, gave us a second human need, which is uncertainty. We need variety. We need surprise.

  Tony Robbins

  Motivation, Inspiration, Bored

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• HURRICANE, n. An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is still in popular use in the West Indies and is preferred by certain old- fashioned sea-captains.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Science, West Indies, Sea

  Ambrose Bierce (2009). “The Devil's Dictionary: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.147, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it - the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Faith, Men, Thinking

  "The Ascent of Man" (Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"), 1973.

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• As a scientist, I don't believe anything. Science shouldn't use the word belief. There are things more likely and less likely. Science can say nothing with absolute certainty.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Faith, Believe, Use

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• Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.

  Arthur Eddington

  Life, Math, Statistics

  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1933). “The nature of the physical world”

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• The propositions of mathematics have, therefore, the same unquestionable certainty which is typical of such propositions as "All bachelors are unmarried," but they also share the complete lack of empirical content which is associated with that certainty: The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter.

  Carl Gustav Hempel

  Math, Typical, Statistics

  Carl Gustav Hempel (2001). “The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel: Studies in Science, Explanation, and Rationality”, p.13, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Simple, Games

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• It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and ends with probability.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Truth, Math, Degrees

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “A Treatise on Probability”, p.322, Cosimo, Inc.

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