Certitude Quotes - Page 2

• The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

  Chris Hedges

  Self, Color, Doubt

  Chris Hedges (2014). “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, p.147, PublicAffairs

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• We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Believe, Struggle

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• The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment damned up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breath-taking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. He stages a world of make-believe so indispensable for the realization of self-sacrifice and united action.

  Eric Hoffer

  Leadership, Believe, Sacrifice

  "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements" by Eric Hoffer, (p. 111), 1951.

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• For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Acceptance, Doubt

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

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• Faith is not a question of basking in the certainty that there is a God and that God is taking care of us. Many of us are never granted this kind of assurance. Certitude is not the real substance of faith. Faith is a way of seeing things.

  Ronald Rolheiser

  Real, Way, Substance

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• From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.

  Joseph Heller

  Men, Moral, Motivated

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• The greatest threat to civility - and ultimately civilization - is an excess of certitude. The world is much menaced just now by people who think that the world and their duties in it are clear and simple. They are certain that they know what - who - created the universe and what this creator wants them to do to make our little speck in the universe perfect, even if extreme measures - even violence - are required.

  George Will

  Simple, Thinking, Civilization

  George Will (2008). “One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation”, p.335, Crown Forum

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• [My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Feet, Eight, Historical Novels

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• Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Love Is, Conviction, Indescribable

  "Q&A: Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Rosanna Greenstreet, www.theguardian.com. January 8, 2010.

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• Faith is certitude without proofs ... Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Faith, Instinct, Proof

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• We [tend to] have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We [often feel that we] cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its root in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate.

  Bruce Lee

  Roots, People, Insecurity

  "Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living".

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• Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding.

  Thomas Merton

  Heart, Meditation, Doubt

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

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• Existential anxiety of doubt drives the person toward the creation of certitude of systems of meaning, which are supported by tradition and authority. Neurotic anxiety builds a narrow castle of certitude which can be defended with the utmost certainty.

  Paul Tillich

  Anxiety, Doubt, Castles

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• What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mean, Feelings, Charm

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• Certitude drives people mad.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  People, Mad

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• In music everything is prolonged, everything is edified, and when the enchantment has ceased, we are still bathed in its clarity; solitude is accompanied by a new hope between pity for ourselves - which makes us more indulgent and more understanding - and the certitude of finding something again, that which lives for ever in music.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Solitude, Understanding

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• The neglected legacy of the Sixties is just this: unabashed moral certitude, and the purity -- the incredibly outgoing energy -- of righteous rage.

  June Jordan

  Energy, Legacy, Moral

  June Jordan (1992). “Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union”, Pantheon

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• The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories...Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Dream, Inspiration, Artist

  "Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons". Book by Igor Stravinsky, 1947.

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• Economists are about as useful as astrologers in predicting the future (and, like astrologers, they never let failure on one occasion diminish certitude on the next).

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Next, Economics, Economist

  "A Clinton Report Card, So Far" by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., www.nytimes.com. April 11, 1993.

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• Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down... There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.

  Albert Camus

  Attitude, Fighting, Giving

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• ...any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.

  Julian Huxley

  Religious, Real, Inspiration

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• Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Faith, Light, Next Week

  Robert Anton Wilson (2002). “Tsog: The Thing That Ate the Constitution”

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• To commit herself to becoming "an apostle of Joy" when humanly speaking she might have felt at the brink of despair, was heroic indeed. She could do so because her joy was rooted in the certitude of the ultimate goodness of God's loving plan for her. And though her faith in this truth did not touch her soul with consolation, she ventured to meet the challenges of life with a smile. Her one lever was her blind trust in God.

  Brian Kolodiejchuk

  Loving Life, Joy, Challenges

  Brian Kolodiejchuk, Mother Teresa (2012). “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The revealing private writings of the Nobel Peace Prize winner”, p.171, Random House

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• Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.

  Georges Braque

  Perfect, Perfection, Mind

  Karen Wilkin, Georges Braque (1991). “Georges Braque”

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• Courage consists, however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquilly and hypocritically in false refuges. Values, morals, homelands, religions, and these private certitudes that our vanity and our complacency bestow generously on us, have many deceptive sojourns as the world arranges for those who think they are standing straight and at ease, among stable things

  Gilles Deleuze

  Thinking, Vanity, Ease

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