Quotessence
Home / Topics / Certainty Quotes

Certainty Quotes

Browse 1462 quotes about Certainty.

Related topics

IfsCertainKnowsUncertaintyMenDoubtPeopleWorldThinkingAbsolutesAbsolute CertaintyMayHumansScienceReasoningGivingLogicWayMindOntologyNeedsFactsMatterBelieveBeliefHas BeensDoePersonsShouldSelfKindStillsTwoProbabilityWantMathematicsFeelingsFeelsLifeSoulI CanLongRealEnoughFirstsLittlesMathematicalSaidMeanUncertainAnswersDegreesInfiniteKnowingLastsHeartIgnoranceInspirationalMomentsMoralSeemsWould BeYearsDreamMadeReasonCertainty In LifeConvictionDecisionIdeasOrderRealityStatesBodyDiesEndsEvidenceExistenceFormFoundKnowledgeLife IsLooksSometimesUniverseAbleChanceChristianFacesGreaterHandsIndividualOpinionPossibilityTheoryTryingWellsWholeAcceptingAgemore

Certainty Quotes

“One of the most basic and pervasive social processes is the sorting and labeling of things, activities, and people... Sorting and labeling processes involve a trade-off of costs and benefits. In general, the more finely the sorting is done, the greater the benefits - and the costs... Sorting and labeling, whether of people or of things, is a sorting and labeling of probabilities rather than of certainties.”

PeopleDoneSocialProcessGreaterCostActivityBenefitsTradeCertaintyProbabilityLabelingSortingTrade Offs
Author:Thomas Sowell
Create image

“If we are to reach certainty and true autonomy of realization, we need to be willing to be heretics. What's more, we need to become universal heretics, not believing anything that we do not know from direct experience, beyond stories, beyond hearsay, and even beyond the mind.”

IfsKnowsNeedsMindBelieveStoriesWillingDirectUniversalCertaintyRealizationAutonomyHereticHearsay
Book:Diamond Heart: Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery
Create image

“When you believe you have found an important scientific fact, and are feverishly curious to publish it, constrain yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, fight yourself, try and ruin your own experiments, and only proclaim your discovery after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses. But when, after so many efforts you have at last arrived at a certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human soul.”

TryingYearsBelieveHumansImportantSoulSometimesFactsLastsJoyFightingFoundFeltEffortWeekDiscoveryContraryExperimentsRuinsCuriousCertaintyExhaustedHypothesisPublishHuman SoulConstrainScientific Facts
Author:Louis Pasteur
Create image

“Lack of self-confidence is, more often than not, simple laziness. We feel confused and uncertain because we do not know. But instead of making the effort to investigate, we procrastinate and worry. We tell ourselves we can't instead of learning how we can. If we used the mental energy we expend in worry and fear to get out and find out about what we do not know, we would see our self-confidence grow. Lack of self-confidence is not overcome by faith, but by action. It is a lack, not of certainty, but of effort. Too often we are certain that we can't before we give ourselves a fair chance.”

IfsKnowsGivingFeelsSelfActionUsedCertainEnergyGrowsChanceSimpleEffortWorryFairsOvercomingSelf ConfidenceCertaintyConfusedLazinessUncertainProcrastinatingWorry And FearLack Of Self Confidence
Book:Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design
Create image

“Revolution is the only thing, the only power, that ever worked out freedom for any people. The powers that have ruled long and learned to love ruling, will never give up that prerogative until they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow and destruction if they do not. To plant-to revolutionize-these are the twin stars that have ruled our pathway. What have we then to dread in the word Revolution-we, the children of rebels!”

PeopleIfsGivingChildrenLongStarsRevolutionGiving UpDestructionPlantCertaintyRebelDreadTwinsRulingNever Giving UpPathwaysPrerogative
Author:Wendell Phillips
Create image

“Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.”

SoulRealitySchoolQualityStageObjectsSightExcellenceProofCertaintyImmortalityProvokingTestedFloatsSusceptibleLeaves Of Grass
Book:Selected poems
Create image

“Can you predict the future with absolute certainty? Your answer must be no. You have two options: You can either decide to accept yourself as an imperfect human being with limited knowledge and realize that you will at times make mistakes, or you can hate yourself for it.”

HumansTwoHateRealizingHuman BeingsAnswersMistakeAcceptingAbsolutesCertaintyMaking MistakesImperfectHate YouAccepting YourselfAbsolute CertaintyTwo OptionsLimited Knowledge
Author:David D. Burns
Create image

“The issue here is this, that the Government's argument at the present moment is the argument that now the war is over, terrorism is defeated, we have to focus on economic development which in the north and east particular, being the areas where the war was fought, development has to proceed at a pace. That people from those parts of the country are leaving seems to suggest a lack of confidence and certainty in the trajectory of this kind of economic development.”

PeopleKindWarCountryMomentsSeemsGovernmentIssuesFocusEconomicParticularDevelopmentAreasArgumentLeavingTerrorismEastCertaintyPresent MomentPaceDefeatedEconomic DevelopmentTrajectoryLack Of Confidence
Author:Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu
Create image

“In practice, some come to see easily, some with difficulty. But whatever the case, never mind. Difficult or easy, the Buddha said not to be heedless. Just that--don't be heedless. Why? Because life is not certain. Wherever we start to think that things are certain, uncertainty is lurking right there. Heedlessness is just holding things as certain. It is grasping at certainty where there is no certainty and looking for truth in things that are not true. Be careful! They are likely to bite you sometime in the future!”

ThinkingMindSaidLife IsCertainEasyDifficultPracticeCasesDifficultyCarefulCertaintyUncertaintyBitesBe CarefulGraspingLurking
Book:Being Dharma: The Essence of the Buddha's Teachings
Create image

“Whenever a man is known to seek promotion by intrigue, by temporizing, or by resorting to the haunts of vulgarity and vice for support, it may be inferred, with moral certainty, that he is not a man of real respectability, nor is he entitled to public confidence.”

MenMayRealKnownMoralSupportVicesCertaintyEntitledIntriguePromotionVulgarityRespectability
Book:Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education: To which is Subjoined a Brief History of the United States
Create image

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.”

PeopleKnowsWorldShouldReasonEarthChristianHeavenStarsSituationLaughingIgnoranceDistanceSizeScriptureCertaintyNonsenseOffensiveEmbarrassingScornOrbitUnbelieversDisgraceful
Author:Saint Augustine
Create image

“The only difference between causation and the value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference. In classical science it was supposed that the world always works in terms of absolute certainty and that "cause" is the more appropriate word to describe it. But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences.”

WorldValuesIndividualCausesTermDifferencesModernChangedBehaviorAbsolutesPatternsCommittedPhysicsCertaintyConsistentAppropriateQuantumPreferenceParticlesPredictableQuantum PhysicsImpliedCausationAbsolute Certainty
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
Create image

“So the journey is over and I am back again where I started, richer by much experience and poorer by many unexploded certainties. For convictions and certainties are too often the concomitants of ignorance. Those who like to feel they are always right and who attached a high importance to their own opinions should stay at home. When one is traveling, convictions are mislaid as easily as spectacles; but unlike spectacles, they are not easily replaced.”

FeelsShouldHomeOpinionJourneyIgnoranceImportanceConvictionCertaintyReplacedBack AgainStay At HomeSpectacles
Author:Aldous Huxley
Create image

“A geometrical theory in physical interpretation can never be validated with mathematical certainty ... ; like any other theory of empirical science, it can acquire only a more or less high degree of confirmation.”

TheoryDegreesCertaintyMathematicalAcquireInterpretationConfirmation
Book:The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel: Studies in Science, Explanation, and Rationality
Create image