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Certainty Quotes

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Certainty Quotes

“I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world, where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty. All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient. But there is a Supreme Being hidden therein as a Certainty, and one would be blessed if one could catch a glimpse of that Certainty and hitch one's waggon to it. The quest for that Truth is the summum bonum of life.”

IfsThinkingWorldHappensWould BeThis WorldTruth IsBlessedSupremeCertaintyUncertaintyQuestsUncertainGlimpseTransientBeing BlessedSupreme Being
Book:Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
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“The Greeks had had vast experience in this world, their imagination had been fertile and they had created much...that, in these circumstances, they should fall in with a people imbued with a calm and sometimes stolid and bucolic certainty where its spiritual possessions were concerned, barbarians with no sculpture or breeding, necessarily tinged their contempt with impotent wrath. The inevitably logical result of this attitude on the part of the Greeks was the growth of anti-Semitism, of hatred of the Jews.”

PeopleWorldShouldSometimesSpiritualFallGrowthImaginationResultsAttitudeThis WorldCircumstancesConcernedHatredCalmJewPossessionCertaintyGreekLogicalContemptSculptureWrathBreedingBarbariansFertileAnti Semitism
Author:Joseph Kastein
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“Dream life, I realized, was only confusing when you were awake. It was from the perspective of waking life that dream life seemed fractured and lacking consequence, lacking any certainty that one thing led to another. But from within dream life, the world was generally coherent. Not exactly an unconfusing world-just no more confusing than any other.”

WorldDreamOne ThingPerspectiveConsequenceI RealizedCertaintyAwakeWakingLackingConfusingWaking Life
Book:The Coma
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“The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home.”

IfsThinkingGivingPersonsLongHomeDesireNaturalLinesDecisionPayAttentionSituationConsciousGive MeSettingSettingsCertaintyMiserablePay AttentionShopsCrapTrafficPettyFrustratingFatigueCrowdedJamDefaultTime To ThinkAisleTraffic JamCheckouts
Author:David Foster Wallace
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“Certainty is not biologically possible. We must learn (and teach our children) to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. Science has given us the language and tools of probabilities. We have methods for analyzing and ranking opinion according to their likelihood of correctness. That is enough.”

ChildrenEnoughLanguageGivenOpinionTeachHumilityToolsOur ChildrenMethodCertaintyUncertaintyTolerateProbabilityCorrectnessLikelihoodAnalyzingRanking
Author:Robert A. Burton
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“Historians constantly rewrite history, reinterpreting (reorganizing) the records of the past. So, too, when the brain's coherent responses become part of a memory, they are organized anew as part of the structure of consciousness. What makes them memories is that they become part of that structure and thus form part of the sense of self; my sense of self derives from a certainty that my experiences refer back to me, the individual who is having them. Hence the sense of the past, of history, of memory, is in part the creation of the self.”

SelfPastFormIndividualMemoriesBrainConsciousnessHistoryRecordsCreationStructureResponseCertaintyOrganizedHistorianSelf ConsciousSense Of SelfSelf Consciousness
Author:Israel Rosenfield
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“But theological change happens though selective quoting. Every religious person does it: You quote those verses that resonate with your own religious insights and ignore or reinterpret those that undermine your certainties. Selective quoting isn't just legitimate, but essential: Religions evolve through shifts in selective quoting.”

PersonsDoeHappensReligiousEssentialsInsightCertaintyEvolveVersesTheologicalSelectiveQuotingReligious Person
Author:Yossi Klein Halevi
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“The rocket that goes up next March will not only lift a payload, it will launch what I believe will ultimately be the most significant commercial space facility in the country, ... This launch will be a brilliant signal flare that will let the nation and the world know New Mexico's spaceport is open for business. We can now say with certainty that the dream of this spaceport launching a new era in New Mexico's aerospace industry will become reality.”

KnowsWorldBelieveCountryDreamRealityNextI BelieveNationsSpaceIndustryBrilliantSignificantCertaintyErasLiftsMarchMexicoSignalsFacilityRocketsNew EraLaunchingFlareNew MexicoAerospace
Author:Bill Richardson
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“"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken." I should like to have that written over the portals of every church, every school, and every courthouse, and, may I say, of every legislative body in the United States. I should like to have every court begin, "I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that we may be mistaken."”

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Author:Learned Hand
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“I have a mathematical certainty that the future will confirm my assertion that aerial warfare will be the most important element in future wars, and that in consequence not only will the importance of the Independent Air Force rapidly increase, but the importance of the army and navy will decrease in proportion.”

ImportantWarForceAirElementsConsequenceImportanceIncreaseArmyIndependentCertaintyMathematicalProportionAviationWarfareNavyAssertionDecreaseAir ForceAir PowerAirpower
Book:Command Of The Air
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“It is suggested that in domestic violence at least the presence or absence of a firearm, or of any other type of weapon, is of far less importance to the outcome than the passion generated in the attacker. The man who has lost control will cause serious injuries in many cases, quite irrespective of the weapon he uses and regardless of the certainty of detections and punishment.”

MenUsePassionLostCausesCasesViolenceHe ManSeriousTypeWeaponsImportanceAbsencePunishmentCertaintyOutcomesInjuryDomestic ViolenceFirearmsDetection
Author:Colin Greenwood
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“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.”

PeopleLifeTwoRealDreamEarthUsedDesirePassionOur LivesMeetingsGuidesCertaintyExcitementUnexpectedRealisingSignalsShaking
Author:Paulo Coelho
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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.”

WantKindEndsFactsGreatnessCertaintyRememberedIncapacity
Book:The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive
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“Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.”

HumansMadeCertainRealizingInterestingMistakeScientistAimObjectivesCertaintyMade A MistakeHuman KnowledgeObjective Truth
Book:In Search of a Better World: Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years
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“While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.”

MenIndividualNumbersExampleConstantAverageCertaintyMathematicalStatisticsOne ManPuzzlesPercentagesVaryPrecisionStatistician
Author:Arthur Conan Doyle
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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.”

WayTryingDoneProblemCertainProjectsExperimentsCertaintyDisgustingAssociatesAssuredDiscouragement
Author:Thomas A. Edison
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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.”

MenLongDifficultNaturalLeaderVirtueDemandJudgmentIntellectualEvidenceEndureVicesAbsenceIgnorantCertaintyUncertaintyProphetNeverthelessFanaticsCharlatans
Author:Bertrand Russell
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