Uncertainty Quotes - Page 17

• when you can't see straight ahead, it's because you're about to turn a corner.

  Myrtle Reed

  Turns, Corners

  Myrtle Reed (1916). “Old Rose and Silver”, p.86, Library of Alexandria

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• It is not certainty which is creative, but the uncertainty we are pledged to in our works.

  Edmond Jabes

  Creativity, Creative, Certainty

  Edmond Jabès (1977). “The Book of Questions: The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book”, Wesleyan

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• At sixty, I would like to give my future back its vistas of uncertainty.

  Mason Cooley

  Giving, Aging, Vistas

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• You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Mean, Interesting, Catholic

  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1966). “A Hopkins reader: selections”

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• if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.

  Jacqueline Winspear

  Time, Editors, Way

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• We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any pointand to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us.

  Blaise Pascal

  Knowledge, Past, Thinking

  Blaise Pascal, W. F. Trotter, T. S. Eliot (2003). “Pensees”, p.19, Courier Corporation

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• Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.

  Glenn Close

  Leadership, Wisdom, Pain

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• It is up to my spirit to find the truth. But how? Grave uncertainty, each time the spirit feels beyond its own comprehension; whenit, the explorer, is altogether to obscure land that it must search and where all its baggage is of no use. To search? That is not all: to create.

  Marcel Proust

  Creativity, Knowledge, Land

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• Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. This was the sound conclusion of the Academic sceptics, who were the least surly of philosophers.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Sound, Philosopher, Affair

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• Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Religion, Useless

  Baruch Spinoza (2017). “A Theologico-Political Treatise”, Jovian Press

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• Let us become thoroughly sensible of the weakness, blindness, and narrow limits of human reason: Let us duly consider its uncertainty and endless contrarieties, even in subjects of common life and practice.... When these topics are displayed in their full light, as they are by some philosophers and almost all divines; who can retain such confidence in this frail faculty of reason as to pay any regard to its determinations in points so sublime, so abstruse, so remote from common life and experience?

  David Hume

  Determination, Practice, Light

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.4014, Delphi Classics

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• The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Views

  'Four Dissertations' (1757) 'The Natural History of Religion' sect. 15

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• The whole [of religion] is a riddle, an ænigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the onlyresult of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject.

  David Hume

  Doubt, Religion, Mystery

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• Gratitude is a fickle thing, indeed. A person taking aim presses the weapon to his chest and cheek, but when he hits, he discardsit with indifference.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Change, Gratitude, Fickle

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• In the strict formulation of the law of causality—if we know the present, we can calculate the future—it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise.
  On an implication of the uncertainty principle.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Future, Uncertainty Principle, Law

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• That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant just born.

  George Berkeley

  Mean, Sleep, Men

  George Berkeley (2013). “Principles of Human Knowledge”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

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• everything is ambiguous. It's exciting, in a way, if you can tolerate ambiguity. I can't, but I'm taking a course where it's taught, in the hope of acquiring the skill. It's called Modern Living, and you get no credit.

  Sheila Ballantyne

  Skills, Credit, Way

  Sheila Ballantyne (1975). “Norma Jean, the termite queen”, Doubleday Books

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• Lack of opportunity breeds dreams of escape. But professionals and managers who have invested in their careers do not leave the work force as frequently as discouraged workers in lower status occupations. Instead, they keep working, but they escape emotionally by defining achievement in professional, not company, terms. ... Thus, the potential for being stuck as career uncertainty grows takes its toll in weakening attachment to any particular employer.

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Dream, Opportunity, Attachment

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter (2008). “Men and Women of the Corporation: New Edition”, p.328, Hachette UK

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• What I can control and all I know as of today, I am signed up for one more year...I guess things could change, but with all the uncertainty in many aspects, I don't see (his decision not to sign an extension) changing before camp gets here, and when camp gets here I'm even more certain to play it out.

  Philip Rivers

  Years, Play, Decision

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• Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art

  David Bayles

  Art, Desire, Essentials

  David Bayles, Ted Orland (2001). “Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking”, p.21, Image Continuum Press

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• Mathematical demonstrations being built upon the impregnable Foundations of Geometry and Arithmetick are the only truths that can sink into the Mind of Man, void of all Uncertainty; and all other Discourses participate more or less of Truth according as their Subjects are more or less capable of Mathematical Demonstration.

  Christopher Wren

  Men, Mind, Foundation

  James ELMES, Sir Christopher Wren (1852). “Sir Christopher Wren and his times. With illustrative sketches and anecdotes of the most distinguished personages in the seventeenth century”, p.100

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• Nothing in the world causes so much misery as uncertainty.

  Martin Luther

  World, Causes, Misery

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• People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty

  Virginia Satir

  People, Misery, Certainty

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• Indecision is the key to flexibility.

  Kathy Reichs

  Keys, Indecision, Flexibility

  Kathy Reichs (2006). “Break No Bones: A Novel”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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• Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.

  Edith Hamilton

  Results, Wells, Gaining Knowledge

  Edith Hamilton (1936). “The prophets of Israel”, W. W. Norton & Company

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