As Certain As Quotes

#1. Any human being is really good at certain things. The problem is that the things you're good at come naturally. And since most people are pretty modest instead of an arrogant S.O.B. like me, what comes naturally, you don't see as a special skill. It's just you. It's what you've always done.

Stephen Jay Gould

#2. I believe in violence, I believe violence can be solved by greater violence. I also know greater violence breeds more violence. I'm certain now, that violence is like energy; it can't be destroyed, it will always be passed on, as it will be done to you

Cheyi Okoaye

#3. Fleury had succeeded (but only with difficulty) in overcoming certain qualms as to whether selling one's life as dearly as possible, or even putting it up for sale at all, was, in fact, the wisest course

J.G. Farrell

#4. A huge amount of success in life comes from learning as a child how to make good habits. It's good to help kids understand that when they do certain things habitually, they're reinforcing patterns.

Charles Duhigg

#5. I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.

Billy Joel

#6. I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.

Lawrence Wright

#7. The physician who waits until dead certain of a diagnosis before acting is likely to wind up with a dead patient. Sometimes things develop so rapidly that only early action-back when you're still somewhat uncertain-stands a chance of being effective, as in catching cancer before it metastasizes.

Joel Garreau

#8. There may be such a thing as habitual luck. People who are said to be lucky at cards probably have certain hidden talents for those games in which skill plays a role. It is like hidden parameters in physics, this ability that does not surface and that I like to call "habitual luck".

Stanislaw Ulam

#9. One thing is certain. I am not afraid to act as my conscience dictates, no matter what the world may think ...

Antoinette Brown Blackwell

#10. We try and stay out of the corporate side of it. The band has never compromised. At some point in our career we could have made a certain type of record and sold millions of units, as they are called.

Adrian Smith

#11. Certain people do need to stay in character the whole time, and that's just what they require as a person.

Michael Angarano

#12. As I look back at the span of the Cold War in those early days, in the '50s, for example, there was a great deal of Soviet propaganda here in the United States, but it was clumsy, and it was anchored to a lot of ideological support in certain circles in America itself.

Alexander Haig

#13. As Halloran parachuted over Tokyo, the Zero that had shot him down sped toward him, and Halloran was certain that he was going to be strafed, as so many falling airmen were. But instead of firing, the pilot saluted him. After the war, Halloran and that pilot, Isamu Kashiide, became dear friends.

Laura Hillenbrand

#14. At ordinary times, then, we are perfectly certain that men are not equal. But when, in a democratic country, we think or act politically we are no less certain that men are equal. Or at any rate - which comes to the same thing in practice - we behave as though we were certain of men's equality.

Aldous Huxley

#15. Is this Dornish wine?" Tyrion asked him once, as he pulled a stopper from a skin. "It reminds me of a certain snake I knew. A droll fellow, till a mountain fell on him.

George R R Martin

#16. Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, private; for, when every one has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business.

Aristotle.

#17. In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

David Byrne

#18. One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.

Montesquieu

#19. This relationship, often called the Golden mean, has been discovered and rediscovered at various times in history as a unique proportion believed to have both aesthetic and mystic significance. That the Egyptians knew of it and used it seems certain.

John Pile

#20. We don't think of them as acting, but we take on certain characteristics based on where we function, and those relationships draw out aspects of who we are as people. And that's what acting is. Different parts draw out different parts of your nature.

Peter Riegert

#21. We need to get back to reasoning and thinking things through. The future generation is being brought up in greed and without a true understanding of civics. There is no more emphasis on knowledge and time. As a society we need to process ideas and understand what certain principles are based upon.

Richard Dreyfuss

#22. If any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.

Marcus Aurelius

#23. On certain social occasions, otherwise dignified and serious men will begin behaving unconsciously like players on a stage, performing as they talk, acting as they gesticulate. The cause is invariably a woman.

Jed Rubenfeld

#24. As African-Americans, that's what's being played fast and loose with, our citizenship. When you have the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns being shot and killed, it's because, on a certain level, there is a kind of mutability in the understanding of citizenship around the black body.

Claudia Rankine

#25. when you are a child you unconsciously adopt certain beliefs. Yet, there comes
the necessity to upgrade these beliefs as you grow older.

Derric Yuh Ndim

#26. I understand, certain scenes have to have a lot of takes. As an actor, I think it's quite nice to have a handful of takes, because you don't want to do it once or twice; I think once or twice sometimes is quite terrifying because you don't really feel like you've given them what you want.

Luke Evans

#27. If the blood of France and of Germany flows again, as it did twenty-five years ago, in a longer and even more murderous war, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism.

Edouard Daladier

#28. It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say "we" with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke "others" and regard himself as their interpreter - for me to consider him my enemy.

Emil Cioran

#29. It's her ability as an artist to see possibility where others see a blank page and, by extension, to see victory where others see certain defeat that truly empowers her ...

Sarah Cross

#30. There's a sense that, on a certain day, you want to destroy everything, even the ones you love. Humans are weird like that. You build an empire and you hate it as soon as it's done. That's because we're never satisfied.

Jamie Lidell

#31. I like to express certain things that happen in my life, the joy of spring, the birds singing and young babies coming into the world. You know, the whole thing as well as the part I'm not happy with, the sad part.

Roy Haynes

#32. You have a soft spot in your heart for each movie, and you're doing certain things. You're learning as you're going, as a director, and each movie is its own entity.

Chris Buck

#33. I have certain strong interests that fill my life as well.

Loretta Swit

#34. At her birthday, my seven-year-old daughter will say that she wants these big cakes and certain expensive toys as presents, and I can't say no to her. It would just break my heart. But when I was little, for birthdays we just played outside and we were happy if we got any cake.

Goran Ivanisevic

#35. There's no such thing as passivity. You're either consciously inactive or unconsciously inactive. In both cases, you're interfering with a certain outcome and contributing to your fate.

Robin Sacredfire

#36. I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?

Goldie Hawn

#37. You seem so clear about who you are. So certain that you are just right as you are, that for all your intelligence and maybe in spite of it, you never seem to need a second opinion.

Alice Walker

#38. Nevertheless there are certain peaks, canons, and clear meadow spaces which are above all compassing of words, and have a certain fame as of the nobly great to whom we give no familiar names.

Mary Hunter Austin

#39. Of this you may be certain: The Lord especially loves righteous women-women who are not only faithful but filled with faith, women who are optimistic and cheerful because they know who they are and where they are going, women who are striving to live and serve as women of God.

M. Russell Ballard

#40. I wanted to get away from having a minister who pretends to be a certain type of role model. I don't want my life to serve as an example for anyone.

Kristina Schroder

#41. There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

#42. To grow up under really simple circumstances, and to understand that certain things were ornamental ... that made an impression on me as a child and is something I use.

Helmut Lang

#43. He had a certain air of being a handsome man
which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man
which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.

Charles Dickens

#44. I read certain articles about how all of the new filmmakers are immediately being given massive tentpoles, and there's a lot of original movies that we have now lost as a result of this. I don't want to call it a fad because I think it's a good thing. I think the movies are better as a result.

Colin Trevorrow

#45. It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as when we have accepted an invitation we duly arrive in a certain house at a given time.

W.G. Sebald

#46. No more sounds emerged as he walked through the forest, save the whisper of the leaves above. Though nothing further appeared out of the ordinary, he knew one thing for certain.
He was not alone.

Madeline Martin

#47. Everyone holds a certain type of power. For young people, it's their youth, their attractiveness, and their energy. But they're terrified that as those qualities fade, what are they going to replace that form of power with?

Chuck Palahniuk

#48. At a certain point in his life he stopped searching for himself in everything that exists and gave in to temptations. Or, as you say, he sinned and later fled.

Laura Esquivel

#49. I suppose that my inner soul - my dual personality - had realized long before that Florence was a personality of paper - that she represented a real human being with a heart, with feelings, with sympathies and with emotions only as a bank-note represents a certain quantity of gold.

Ford Madox Ford

#50. Acting for me, is a passion, but it's also a job, and I've always approached it as such. I have a certain manual-laborist view of acting. There's no shame in taking a film because you need some money.

James Spader

#51. I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words.

David Frum

#52. Music to me, still to this day, is this wide open landscape of potential sounds (and I have more words for it now as a grown person), but as a little kid I used to think, "oh, you can just make up melodies and sometimes when you make certain melodies it makes you feel a certain way."

Josh Garrels

#53. In certain situations, you can't worry about how people will react. You just hyave to be as honest as you can and let what happens afterward happen.

Marisa De Los Santos

#54. I remembered back to leo's burial and holding your hand. I was eleven and you were six, your hand soft and small in mine. As the vicar said 'in sure and certain hope of the resurrection of eternal life' you turned to me, 'I don't want sure and certain hope I want sure and certain Bee.

Rosamund Lupton

#55. Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized.

Albert Einstein

#56. Usually when someone says a thing is too simple, they're saying that certain familiar things aren't there, and they're seeing a couple maybe that are left, which they count as a couple, that's all.

Donald Judd

#57. I admire certain priests and nuns who go off on their own and do God's work on their own, who help in the ghettos, but as far as the institution of the church is concerned, I think it is despicable.

Frank McCourt

#58. Science is knowledge certain and evident in itself, or by the principles from which it is deducted, or with which it is certainly connected. It is subjective, as existing in the mind; objective, as embodied in truths; speculative, as leading to do something, as in practical science.

William Fleming

#59. I think that everyone has something about themselves that they feel is their weakness ... their 'disability.' And I'm certain we all have one, because I think of a disability as being anything which undermines our belief and confidence in our own abilities.

Aimee Mullins

#60. What comes with a job as a staff member of the BBC is a certain self-censoring that you get utterly used to. You don't say everything you think. You hold back on some things.

Evan Davis

#61. I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from foreign affairs.

Judith Butler

#62. As to Caesar, when he was called upon, he gave no testimony against Clodius, nor did he affirm that he was certain of any injury done to his bed. He only said, He had divorced Pompeia because the wife of Caesar ought not only to be clear of such a crime, but of the very suspicion of it.

Plutarch

#63. The near future will see robot suits that allow paraplegics to walk, designer drugs that melt away certain forms of cancer, and computer code being used as both an international currency and a weapon to destroy physical infrastructure halfway around the world.

Alec J. Ross

#64. With F1, it's really a combination of many things. You have to have good endurance, good strength in certain muscles, you need to be fast, have good reactions and good decisions. It's not as simple as one thing. You need to be a complete athlete.

Valtteri Bottas

#65. Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.

Seneca The Younger

#66. There are certain families who absolutely incorporate their nanny as part of the family, and there are other people, and there are codes for this, when they call in, they say, 'I am really not looking for a friend.' It is clear they will not be members of the family.

Robert Klein

#67. What is absolutely certain is that the naturalist view of things is, as I have said, just a picture of the world, not a truth about the world that we can know, nor even a conviction that rests upon a secure rational foundation.

David Bentley Hart

#68. To make sense to us as physical creatures, any 'truth' must undergo transformations, be couched in certain terms or we couldn't understand it.

Jane Roberts

#69. Southern white people despise the Negro as a race, and will do nothing to aid in his elevation as such; but for certain individuals they have a strong affection, and are helpful to them in many ways.

James Weldon Johnson

#70. Sometimes it's more terrible and more stupid to sit, paralyzed, as events slip past you. A certain kind of guardian angel must watch over fools as they rush in.

Christina Bartolomeo

#71. We know next to nothing about the relationship between Chavez and Raul Castro. One thing, though, is certain. The Cuban military and political elite do not regard Chavez as a logical successor to Fidel Castro in Latin America.

Mark Falcoff

#72. The Righteous Salaf were as fearful of their good deeds being squandered, or not being accepted, as the present generation is certain that their neglect would be forgiven.

Hasan Of Basra

#73. I suppose I'm a cultural Anglican, and I see evensong in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green. I have a certain love for it.

Richard Dawkins

#74. What Americans were really objecting to had nothing to do with constitutional principles. their objection was not to Parliament's constitutional right to levy certain kinds of taxes as opposed to others, but to its effort to collect any.

Bernard Bailyn

#75. I get butterflies before going out to ride every day, but they disappear as soon as I am on a horse, and I think that is the same for most jockeys. Then it is just down to you and the horse, and there is a certain freedom in that.

Tony McCoy

#76. A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values.

Pierre Trudeau

#77. As a coach, I want players to challenge me, to question me and ask why we're doing a certain thing, so they feel that they're taking ownership.

Warren Gatland

#78. Shambhala does have unique teachings, as do many Buddhist traditions. For example, certain teachings within Shambhala have to do with raising the personal windhorse, or the energy of the individual, so a person has good fortitude to be able to live a good life.

Sakyong Mipham

#79. As it turned out, home wasn't a certain place; home as a feeling from the ones for whom you cared most, a feeling of peace that calmed the wildfires of your soul.

Brittainy C. Cherry

#80. I find a certain peace by thinking of me in public as sort of an avatar self. You out there can have the avatar me.

Jennifer Lawrence

#81. We and other groups are seeing clear statistical links between telomere shortness and risk for a variety of diseases that are becoming very common, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancers.

Elizabeth Blackburn

#82. She acted as a kind of rough and ready chemical reagent; in certain combinations she produced certain known results.

Christopher Isherwood

#83. Because I want every kid to be viewed as a person rather than as a member of a certain race does not mean that I'm not black enough ... Do they want me to be positive just for black kids and negative for everybody else?

Michael Jordan

#84. No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain ... No scientific theory is sacrosanct ...

Karl Popper

#85. As somebody who wanted to be creative, growing up, I remember always thinking that the thing I had going against me was Orange County because it seemed like all of the comedy was coming out of New York, and it still is, to a certain extent.

Mitchell Hurwitz

#86. Human cultures vary widely in the plants they use to gratify the desire for a change of mind, but all cultures (save the Eskimo) sanction at least one such plant and, just as invariably, strenuously forbid certain others. Along with the temptation seems to come the taboo.

Michael Pollan

#87. Past a certain point it is not interesting to think about childhood as the central drama and adulthood as its reprise.

Martha Cooley

#88. You don't try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he's the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.

Wynton Marsalis

#89. If my idea was just to maintain a certain lifestyle, there would be no need to get a Ph.D. But I do care very deeply about the idea side as well.

Evgeny Morozov

#90. The problem as you get older is, from my perspective, after a certain amount of songs, you tend to start writing something and then you stop and say, 'Wait, I think I've written that before.'

Robert Smith

#91. I don't think there's any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent.

Imogen Cunningham

#92. If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut short after the first few leaden sentences.

Walter Kirn

#93. You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you're nuts, and you're not as popular with girls as you should be.

Ray Bradbury

#94. Eventually we must leave Earth-at least a certain number of our progeny must as our sun approaches the end of its solar life cycle. But just as terrestrial explorers have always led the way for settlers, this will also happen extraterrestrially. Earth is our cradle, not our final destiny.

Edgar Mitchell

#95. I started to play noise on my cello because I felt a deep personal connection to it. I mean, I still love all the beautiful sounds of the cello as much as anybody but it's only when I play certain sounds I know that the cello really presents who I am; not my emotions but who I am as a person.

Okkyung Lee

#96. I'm quite certain the Windows 8 team is preparing to market IE 10 - and by extension, Windows 8 - as the safe, privacy-enhancing choice, capitalizing on Google's many government woes and consumers' overall unease with the search giant's power.

John Battelle

#97. I was perfectly certain that I had nothing to offer of an individual nature and that my only chance of doing my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing ...

Eleanor Roosevelt

#98. In other localities certain places in the streams are much better than others, but at Niagara one place is just as good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere.

Mark Twain

#99. Is there not a certain satisfaction in the fact that natural limits are set to the life of the individual, so that at the conclusion it may appear as a work of art?

Albert Einstein

#100. I made as many mistakes as anybody else. I sound as if I'm an egomaniac, and I suppose in some ways I'm filled with hubris because I know how good I am at certain things. But other things, I can't do at all. I can't draw.

Harlan Ellison