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Certainty Quotes

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Certainty Quotes

“The management has exploited our wish for infallible systems: here is the water, there is the land, no one can make a mistake. Up to this line there is no danger; on the other side of the line waits certain death. Therefore the alarm wails and the guests flee from their rooms with their clothes fluttering around them. The illusion of complete safety so long as the margin is not reached bears the reverse implication of complete panic once the margin is exceeded. It is easier to choose these sharp demarcation lines than uncertainty in our individual situation; the adjustment has been so small that in itself it is not disastrous, but could contribute to disaster.”

DangerSafetyCertaintyUncertaintyPanicCalmnessCertitudeInfallibilitySureness
Book:Termush
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“I'm a girl." When Deryn opened her eyes, the lady boffin was staring at her with no change of expression. "Indeed," she said. Deryn's mouth feel open. "You mean you...Did you barking know?" "I had no idea at all. But I make it a policy never to appear surprised." Dr. Barlow sighed, staring out the window. "Though on this occasion, it is proving rather more demanding than usual. A girl, you say? And you're quite certain?”

GirlCertaintyGoliathSharpDerynScott WesterfeldBarlowLeviathant
Book:Goliath
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“Yet it is unassailably true that so long as we lack omniscience and do not know all of the future, all our generalizations are fallible or only probable. And the history of human error shows that a general consensus, or widespread and unquestioned feeling of certainty, does not preclude the possibility that the future may show us to be in error.”

CertaintyErrorOmniscienceGeneralizationsProbableFallible
Book:An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method
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“The compulsive quest for certainty, as we find with Luther, is not the expression of genuine faith but is rooted in the need to conquer the unbearable doubt. Luther's solution is one which we find present in many individuals today, who do not think in theological terms: namely to find certainty by elimination of the isolated individual self, by becoming an instrument in the hands of an overwhelmingly strong power outside of the individual. For Luther this power was God and in unqualified submission he sought certainty. But although he thus succeeded in silencing his doubts to some extent, they never really disappeared; up to his last day he had attacks of doubt which he had to conquer by renewed efforts toward submission.”

DoubtCertaintySubmissionAuthoritarianismMartin Luther1941Protestant Reformation
Book:Escape from Freedom
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“Roosevelt loved the subtleties of human relations...He was sensitive to nuances in a way that Harry Truman never was and never would be. Truman, with his rural Missouri background, and partly too, because of the limits of his education, was inclined to see things in far simpler terms, as right or wrong, wise or foolish. He dealt little in abstractions.”

CertaintyProvincialismFranklin Delano RooseveltHarry TrumanCosmopolitanBinary Thinking
Book:Truman
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“We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such an intelligence.”

MindPastScienceTimeUniverseNatureSpacePerfectionIntelligencePhysicsAstronomyCertaintyDataAnalysisFree WillHuman MindEyesPresentComprehensionNaturalismDeterminismMotionOmniscienceFormulaLack Of Free Will
Author:Pierre Simon de Laplace
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“when the great intolerance of faith was lost, the secular robe of office had to supplant the sacred one, and society had to separate itself into secular hierarchies with secular uniforms and invest these with the absolute authority of a creed. And because, when the secular exalts itself as the absolute, the result is always romanticism, so the real and characteristic romanticism of that age was the cult of the uniform, which implied, as it were, a superterrestrial and supertemporal idea of uniform, an idea which did not really exist and yet was so powerful that it took hold of men far more completely than any secular vocation could, a non-existent and yet so potent idea that it transformed the man in uniform into the property of his uniform, and never into a professional man in the civilian sense; and this perhaps simply because the man who wears the uniform is content to feel that he is fulfilling the most essential function of his age and therefore guaranteeing the security of his own life.”

SecuritySacredCertaintySecularRomanticismSymbolSignUniformPasenowThe Romantic
Book:The Sleepwalkers
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“I'm comfortable with the unknown -- that's the point of science. There are places out there, billions of places out there, that we know nothing about. And the fact that we know nothing about them excites me, and I want to go out and find out about them. And that's what science is. So I think if you’re not comfortable with the unknown, then it’s difficult to be a scientist… I don’t need an answer. I don’t need answers to everything. I want to have answers to find.”

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Author:Brian Cox
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“Indeed, on close inspection one sees that by far the greater number of educated people still desire convictions from a thinker and nothing but convictions, and that only a small minority want certainty. The former want to be forcibly carried away in order thereby to obtain an increase of strength; the latter few have the real interest which disregards personal advantages and the increase of strength also. The former class, who greatly predominate, are always reckoned upon when the thinker comports himself and labels himself as a genius, and thus views himself as a higher being to whom authority belongs. In so far as genius of this kind upholds the ardour of convictions, and arouses distrust of the cautious and modest spirit of science, it is an enemy of truth, however much it may think itself the wooer thereof.”

TruthSciencePoliticsConvictionCertaintyUncertaintyScientific MethodConvictions
Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“I remember laughing at that moment, and I remember my son frowning at me in puzzlement. What I remember best of all, though, was the sudden certainty that the gods were with me, that they would fight for me, that my sword would be their sword. ‘We’re going to win,’ I told my son. I felt as if Odin or Thor had touched me. I had never felt more alive and never felt more certain. I knew there would be no more mistakes and that this was no dream. I had come to Bebbanburg and Bebbanburg would be mine.”

RememberLaughingAliveSonMistakesCertaintyTouchedFightBestGodsMomentMeFrowningThorOdinMineSwordsWereSuddenPuzzlementBebbanburg
Book:The Flame Bearer
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“A world full of "certainties" All the plans, all the vanities. Where black covers the white Suited in "confidence"- the constant fight. A million roads I dream to take One destination, knowing not I turn where. A green veil covers for two years, some two decades. But the "plan" awaits, new roads to make. I pant, I struggle, I do my best While they say, "You are, dear, but so inadequate".”

PeopleLifeSchoolCertainProcessBlackWhiteEducationStrugglePlansDreamsSocietyPrideConfidenceProtectExpectationsLiesProtectionPlanningCertaintyCorporateUncertaintyArroganceInterviewsFightBestAmbitiousUncertainDemonsInadequateNot Good EnoughWork Life BalanceAspirationsAmbitionsCollege LifeMbaDream JobDiffidenceStart UpRealitiesCorporate LifeNot EnoughConfidence Vs ArroganceUnplannedCampus LifeBlack SuitFirmsInner FightDream CompanyGroup DiscussionsJob LifeSuit UpSuited Up
Author:Sanhita Baruah
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“Everyone has a right to be wrong; it is only when you were persecuting, demonizing, and hating on those who were right all along that it takes something special to forgive. This is all the more reason for humility, for being patient with those who disagree with you: because it is you who might be wrong, and later, them proven right.”

HateHumilityForgivenessPatienceCertaintyPersecutionRespecting OthersBeing WrongOpinions Of OthersBeing Right
Author:Criss Jami
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“The new painters do not propose, any more than did their predecessors, to be geometers. But it may be said that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer. Today, scholars no longer limit themselves to the three dimensions of Euclid. The painters have been lead quite naturally, one might say by intuition, to preoccupy themselves with the new possibilities of spatial measurement which, in the language of the modern studios, are designated by the term fourth dimension.”

MayHas BeensArtSaidMightTodayThreeLanguageTermModernPossibilityLimitsLogicStudiosIntuitionPainterCertaintyUncertaintyReasoningDimensionsScholarFourthPlasticGrammarProposeMeasurementGeometryPredecessorsOntologyNew PossibilitiesSpatialEuclidThree Dimensions
Author:Guillaume Apollinaire
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