Certainty quotes:

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Certainty is a cruel mindset. -- Ellen Langer
Certainty, not data, is knowledge. -- L. Ron Hubbard
There is no certainty; there is only adventure. -- Roberto Assagioli
A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty. -- Rudyard Kipling
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. -- Vincent Van Gogh
Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. -- Richard Stallman
Certainty becomes you. -- Tessa Dare
Certainty ends inquiry. -- Jacob Bronowski
Inquiry is fatal to certainty. -- Will Durant
Certainty is the enemy of change. -- Salvador Minuchin
Certainty is missing the point entirely. -- Anne Lamott
Certainty is no guarantor of correctness. -- Margaret Heffernan
Doubt is long-winded. Certainty is brief. -- Mason Cooley
Certainty is usually a sign of pathology. -- B. W. Powe
Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal -- William Lane Craig
Certainty a strange Ferris wheel of a statement! -- John Allen Paulos
Certainty abolishes hope, and robs us of renewal. -- Neil Postman
To believe with certainty, we must begin with doubting. -- StanisÅ?aw I LeszczyÅ?ski
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. -- Voltaire
The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind. -- May Sarton
Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility. -- Ellen Langer
We often call a certainty a hope, to bring it luck. -- Elizabeth Bibesco
Certainty... lurks at the door of faith and threatens to devour it. -- Soren Kierkegaard
Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. -- Ashley Montagu
Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature. -- Djuna Barnes
Certainty is the mother of repose, and therefore the common law aims at certainty. -- Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke
Certainty without power can be interesting, even amusing. Certainty with power can be dangerous. -- Donald Rumsfeld
Certainty sees things in restrictive, protective, aggressive ways, and thus isn't seeing at all. -- Jerry Saltz
It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all. -- Henri Poincare
Certainty is a closing of the mind. To create something new you must have doubt. -- Milton Glaser
I have devoted my life to uncertainty. Certainty is the death of wisdom, thought, creativity. -- Shekhar Kapur
Certainty is the most vivid condition of ignorance and the most necessay condition for knowledge. -- Kedar Joshi
Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions. -- Edward Coke
Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life-gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. -- Oswald Chambers
Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions -- Edward Coke
I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance. -- Richard Dreyfuss
We regard it as a certainty that the earth, enclosed between poles, is bounded by a spherical surface. -- Nicolaus Copernicus
Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security -- John Allen Paulos
You have to test your hypothesis against other theories. Certainty in the face of complex situations is very dangerous. -- Richard Holbrooke
Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion. -- Richard Diebenkorn
But teleological considerations can lead no further than to a belief and a hope. They do not give certainty. -- Christian Lous Lange
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me. -- Simone de Beauvoir
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. -- Erich Fromm
Moral certainty, clear standards, and a commitment to spiritual ideals will set you apart in a world that searches for meaning. -- Mitt Romney
Certainty is rarely if ever possible and we increase the likelihood of getting things wrong if we succumb to the hunger for it. -- Peter Elbow
A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end. -- Henry A. Wallace
Spending a weekend with Hitler would have been boring in the extreme, although you would have had a greater certainty in coming back alive. -- Alan Bullock
We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American. -- Anna Quindlen
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
Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it. -- Tom Stoppard
I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action. -- Wole Soyinka
Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you're certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have - that certainty is something to be guarded about. -- Anthony Hopkins
The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. -- Milan Kundera
It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose -- Clifford D. Simak
Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity. -- Vaclav Havel
Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. -- Stephen Colbert
From principles is derived probability but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts -- Tom Stoppard
From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts -- Tom Stoppard
Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating. -- Carl von Clausewitz
In essence we have become addicted to the certainty, sureness or sense of security that our faith provides -- Leo Booth
In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, no matter how many lifetimes you live -- Robert James Waller
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others -- Bertrand Russell
If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar -- John Henry Newman
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties -- Francis Bacon, Sr.
Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty. -- Adam Smith
There are very few certainties that touch us all in this mortal experience, but one of the absolutes is that we will experience hardship and stress at some point. -- James Dobson
The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight. -- Charles Baudelaire
The Palestinians are the only nation in the world that feels with certainty that today is better than what the days ahead will hold. Tomorrow always heralds a worse situation. -- Mahmoud Darwish
To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it. -- Bertrand Russell
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. -- Bertrand Russell
The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. -- Hannah Arendt
Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities. -- George Boole
Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity... -- Vaclav Havel
Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions. -- Thomas Szasz
Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. But I'd like to add a third certainty: trash. And while some in this room might want to discuss reducing taxes, I want to talk about reducing trash. -- Ruth Ann Minner
It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know. -- Sam Harris
The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
In this quest to seek and find God in all things, there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. -- Pope Francis
I imagine God to be like my father. My father was always the voice of certainty in my life. Certainty in the wisdom, certainty in the path, certainty always in God. For me God is certainty in everything. Certainty that everything is good and everything is God. -- Yehuda Berg
If you are messing around all day and then scream for certainty, you're not going to get it. If you spend energy and do the work and develop that certainty, you'll get to where you need to be, even if you don't know exactly where that is. -- Yehuda Berg
Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided. -- Aristotle
People who ask confidently get more than those who are hesitant and uncertain. When you've figured out what you want to ask for, do it with certainty, boldness and confidence. Don't be shy or feel intimidated by the experience. You may face some unexpected criticism, but be prepared for it with confidence. -- Jack Canfield
If falling into desperation worked to make things better, then I would say, 'Let's all jump into despair.' But it doesn't help. The only way to truly find meaning and fulfillment is to look at the disaster, the pain, the difficulty, and know with complete certainty that good can come from this. -- Yehuda Berg
In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York! -- Jules Verne
I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person's life. God is in everyone's life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else - God is in this person's life. You can - you must - try to seek God in every human life. -- Pope Francis
Hope is certainty. -- Lailah Gifty Akita
Moral certainty is intellectual immorality -- Kedar Joshi
The only certainty is death. -- Guy de Maupassant
The only certainty is uncertainty -- Pliny the Elder
Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous. -- Voltaire
Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous -- Voltaire
Change is the investor's only certainty. -- Thomas Rowe Price, Jr.
I have no talent for certainty. -- Jane Austen
Such sober certainty of waking bliss. -- John Milton
What can we say with certainty? -- Voltaire
Moral certainty is never more than probability. -- Giovanni Battista Beccaria
Certitude is not the test of certainty. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood. -- Leonardo da Vinci
[Heraclitus had] a regal air of certainty. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Claiming certainty without corroborating evidence is stupid. -- Han Fei
Nothing consoles and comforts like certainty does. -- Amit Kalantri
A reasonable probability is the only certainty. -- E. W. Howe
The word of God is a certainty. -- Lailah Gifty Akita
The world is certainty a sudden place. -- Carson McCullers
Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity. -- Jane Hirshfield
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change -- Bruce Dickinson
What I need most of all is certainty. -- Milan Kundera
Not doubt, certainty is what drives one insane. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Deep down in everyone was sorrow and certainty. -- Dorothy Richardson
No one can forecast the economy with certainty. -- Jamie Dimon
Vast ills have followed a belief in certainty. -- Kenneth Arrow
There is no certainty; there is only adventure -- Roberto Assagioli
One can acquire certainty only by amputating inquiry. -- Marvin Minsky
If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy. -- Toni Morrison
To believe with certainty, we must begin with doubting. -- StanisÅ?aw I LeszczyÅ?ski
Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
The certainty within our spirit made the dream reality. -- Lailah Gifty Akita
To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting. -- Stanislaus I
The only things of certainty are Death and Taxes. -- Benjamin Franklin

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