On Certainty Quotes

#1. In teaching there can be too much emphasis on certainty and a proper appreciation of uncertainty is to be encouraged.

Dennis Lindley

#2. I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth.

Warren Buffett

#3. If you look around the world and I can tell you right now that the majority of the planet is focused on certainty and significance. And those two absolutely guarantee unhappiness. Because if you're driven by significance, it doesn't matter what you achieve, it's never enough.

Tony Robbins

#4. 'Faith' and 'trust' are words that put the power in the hands of an outside force that we are meant to rely on - whether it is God or a person or the universe. Certainty puts the power back in our hands.

Yehuda Berg

#5. If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.

Michael Specter

#6. When prayer removes distrust and doubt and enters the field of mental certainty, it becomes faith; and the universe is built on faith.

Ernest Holmes

#7. Her ambitions were no longer specifically for happiness or financial security or freedom from disease (thought they included all three), but for something more general: the continuing certainty of things. She needed to know that she would carry on being herself.

Julian Barnes

#8. In our instinctive attachments, our fear of change, and our wish for certainty and permanence, we may undercut the impermanence which is our greatest strength, our most fundamental identity. Without impermanence, there is no process. The nature of life is change. All hope is based on process.

Rachel Naomi Remen

#9. Pride lives on the defensive against anyone and anything that tries to subtract from its self-sustained worth. Confidence, on the other hand, is driven by the certainty of God-given identity and the conviction that nothing can take that identity away.

Beth Moore

#10. Here was world of simplicity and certainty no acidhead, no revolutionary anarchist would ever find, a world based on the one and zero of life and death. Minimal, beautiful. The patterns of life and deaths ...

Thomas Pynchon

#11. The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.

A. C. Benson

#12. To some people, the impossible is impossible. One fine day, they wake up in the morning knowing that they will never hold the moon in their hands, and with the certainty, perfect peace descends on them.

Elizabeth Bibesco

#13. It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#14. I wake up each morning wanting to die before the day is out, but I continue to live, suffering and fighting, fighting and suffering, clinging on to that certainty that it will all end one day.

Paulo Coelho

#15. When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty.

Flannery O'Connor

#16. Biblical hope is not wishful thinking or an optimistic outlook; rather, it is a confident expectation based on the certainty of God's Word that as He has anchored us in the past, so He will in the future.

David Wilkerson

#17. A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.

Alexander Cockburn

#18. Everything had been based on a kind of certainty, a sense of man at the center of things, a sense of order and hierarchy. And suddenly, almost simultaneously, extraordinary discoveries are made.

Stephen Fry

#19. It amazes me, every single time, to see so much certainty backed by so much ignorance and neglect on what is being believed and shared. The mass wisdom of the fools can only be compared to the egotistical need of schizophrenics with many imaginary friends.

Robin Sacredfire

#20. Humility is by definition a starting point - and it sends you off on a journey from there. The arrogance of certainty is both a starting point and an ending point - no journeys needed.

Tim Urban

#21. Look at the chaos of European history. Europeans cannot believe in certainty. But Americans believe in certainty. Americans think this can go on like this forever. Just as it is. No change.

Carl Andre

#22. What awaits you? Eternal peace. Serenity. The light on the other side. What awaits me is unknown. The only certainty is that life is an eternal hell.

Julie Anne Peters

#23. Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery.

Leonardo Da Vinci

#24. foundations, laid in the dark but well laid. On these, methodically and carefully but with a deftness and certainty that seemed nothing of his own but a knowledge working through him, using him as its vehicle, he built up the beautiful steadfast structure of the Principles of Simultaneity. Takver,

Ursula K. Le Guin

#25. Only by digging deep down to the core of our true self can we come to a place of inner certainty. Our underlying values and priorities are our personal navigational stars on life's journey - essential tools to chart a life course that embraces what matters most to us.

Marian Deegan

#26. We must talk and reach for common understandings, precisely because all of us are imperfect and can never act with the certainty that God is on our side; and yet at times we must act nonetheless, as if we are certain, protected from error only by providence.

Barack Obama

#27. Faith does not rely on knowing anything with certainty. It requires only the courage to accept that whatever happens is for the highest good.

Dan Millman

#28. In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.

Cesare Pavese

#29. Doubt is nothing but a trivial agitation on the surface of the soul, while deep down there is a calm certainty.

Francois Mauriac

#30. Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before - consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us.

George Eliot

#31. The joke is on both of you. Your sanction is the only source of certainty he has.

Ayn Rand

#32. The man who saves time by galloping loses it by missing his way; the shepherd who hurries his flock to get them home spends the night on the mountain looking for the lost; economy does not consist in haste, but in certainty.

Ramsay MacDonald

#33. In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: "I wish you luck." I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me.
And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

#34. I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath.

Rene Descartes

#35. there is anything to be learned from the conspiracy - other than when in doubt, bet on George Washington - it is to beware the pitfalls of certainty.

Sarah Vowell

#36. Terrorism is based on two major pillars: One is injustice, and the other is a certainty of attitude, the notion that their version of the story is the correct one.

Shirin Ebadi

#37. She lives as if she is constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away "from all this". All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?

Erica Jong

#38. Think fast on facts.

Toba Beta

#39. [An artist] will sooner and with more certainty, establish the character of skeletons, than the most learned anatomist, whose eye has not been accustomed to seize on every peculiarity.

Rembrandt Peale

#40. May the love in your heart overshadow any sorrows, and may you always know with a deep inner certainty, how loved you truly are.

Jodi Livon

#41. Night fell, the first I had spent not embracing a rock, and perhaps for this reason it seemed cruelly shorter to me. The light tended at every moment to erase Ayl, to cast a doubt on her presence, but the darkness restored my certainty she was there.

Italo Calvino

#42. The literal resurrection of every soul who has lived and died on earth is a certainty, and surely one should make careful preparation for this event. A glorious resurrection should be the goal of every man and woman, for resurrection will be a reality.

Ezra Taft Benson

#43. Few Christians understand the concept of eternal rewards, even thought the Lord dedicated a great deal of His precious time on earth to teaching about them. The one certainty is that our position in the Lord's kingdom will be inversely proportional to how we indulge ourselves in this lifetime.

Larry Burkett

#44. My God, how badly one calculates in this world! ... Let us leave off calculating on anything but death
it is the only certainty.

Eugenie De Guerin

#45. All speech should be presumed to be protected by the Constitution, and a heavy burden should be placed on those who would censor to demonstrate with relative certainty that the speech at issue, if not censored, would lead to irremediable and immediate serious harm.

Alan Dershowitz

#46. There are lots of reasons why a woman stays with a man, even when she's given up on changing him and can predict with certainty the shape that the rest of her life with him is going to take.

A.S.A Harrison

#47. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.

Richard Stallman

#48. In games, he feels that he is "creating something new." But this is creation where someone has already been. It is not creation but the FEELING of creation. These are feelings of accomplishment on a time scale and with a certainty that the real world cannot provide.

Sherry Turkle

#49. You have no assurance that they are doing wrong at all, for the motives of man's actions are not always what they seem. There is generally much to learn before any judgement can be pronounced with certainty on another's doings.

Marcus Aurelius

#50. He stared at her, knowing with certainty that he was falling in love. He pulled her close and kissed her beneath a blanket of stars, wondering how on earth he'd been lucky enough to find her.

Nicholas Sparks

#51. 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

#52. As to the future, the only certainty is that the Internet will encounter new technical and social challenges. If the Internet is to continue as an innovative means of collaboration, discovery, and social interaction, it will need to draw on its legacy of adaptability and participatory design.

Janet Abbate

#53. Watercolour painting is notoriously difficult - so much depends on directness and speed, and certainty of intention. Tentative or fumbling touches are disastrous, for they cannot be obliterated easily.

Walter J. Phillips

#54. I will go on quietly and slowly, but I will go on firmly, and with a certainty of success.

Daniel O'Connell

#55. My love for you, Lord, is not an uncertain feeling, but a matter of concious certainty. With your word you pierced my heart, and I loved you. But heaven and earth and everything in them on all sides tell me to love you.

Saint Augustine

#56. I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.

S.J. Watson

#57. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one's hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite.

Emily St. John Mandel

#58. The other guys are selling certainty. Not me. I'm on the corner with doubt.

Bill Maher

#59. Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.

Wislawa Szymborska

#60. In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

Bertrand Russell

#61. You love me," he said slowly, wonderingly. Then with greater certainty, "By God, you love me." His astonished laugh ended on a choked note as he snatched her hand.
"So much," she said huskily. Her fingers curled hard around his. "So very, very much.

Anna Campbell

#62. What was sureness and certainty? I used to hold on to certainty like a light inside me, hoping it would chase out the dark unknown. But certainty was a phantom strung together on hopes. It would lead you astray at the first chance.

Roshani Chokshi

#63. If you're invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.

Pema Chodron

#64. I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen of the sciences because it claimed certainty. It was grounded on some fundamental certainties - axioms - that led to others.

Tom Stoppard

#65. Never thought I'd see the day when Death was denied. That leaves taxes as the only certainty.

Piers Anthony

#66. In the Congress of the United States, Cromwell had known a good many men who were possessed of absolute certainty, and this he feared so much that he felt the only real and enduring evil on the face of the earth was unbending certainty, unshakable orthodoxy.

Howard Fast

#67. Hope is called the anchor of the soul because it gives stability to the Christian life. But hope is not simply a 'wish' I wish that such-and-such would take place rather, it is that which latches on to the certainty of the promises of the future that God has made.

R.C. Sproul

#68. I was the climber of a sheer cliff, dragging myself on bleeding hands towards a summit that I'd never reach and sometimes didn't want to reach. The things I cared about were the hooks I'd driven into the rock face. Depression snapped them, one by one, one by one. My only certainty was the fall.

Alexis Hall

#69. But if the biblical story is true, the kind of certainty proper to a human being will be one which rests on the fidelity of God, not upon the competence of the human knower. It will be a kind of certainty which is inseparable from gratitude and trust.

Lesslie Newbigin

#70. In trying to formalize a rule, we look for truth, but what we find is knowledge, and what we fail to find is certainty. This limitation has no special bearing on the knowledge of self.

Jacob Bronowski

#71. They say vengeance taken will tear the heart and torment the conscious. If there's any truth to it, then I now know with certainty that the path I'm on is the right one.

Emily Thorne

#72. Science doesn't claim to have absolute certainty about the world; it creates models that provide the best explanation based on the available evidence. If additional evidence is found, the model can be changed.

Armin Navabi

#73. A leader knows it's not so hard to die for your people. It's hard to order your people to die for you. And leading with certainty in an uncertain future doesn't require sight. It requires vision. It requires holding on. And no matter what happens, never letting go.

Paul Jenkins

#74. An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

Alberto Moravia

#75. Be sure of the foundation of your life. Know why you live as you do. Be ready to give a reason for it. Do not, in such a matter as life, build an opinion or custom on what you guess is true. Make it a matter of certainty and science.

Thomas Starr King

#76. Slowly, she made her way out of the water and stood for a moment on the shore, looking out at the vast expanse of the briny deep. She smiled. This had been her baptism, she reckoned, and with a certainty in her soul that could only come from God Himself, she knew that she would begin her life anew.

Paula W. Millet

#77. Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is.

Mark Vonnegut

#78. Action based on hope just felt better than the paralysis of certainty.

Christopher Moore

#79. We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

James Anthony Froude

#80. we knew the Witch Doctor was busy in the village. I've got the spot marked to a certainty in my mind, and all of you notice that there's the finest cedar growing directly above him on the top of the wall,

Frank Fowler

#81. Almost time to go home - and he had come to rely on the desolate wastes of time that lay between these pleasures as an invalid comes to rely on the certainty of recurring pain. It was a part of him.

Richard Yates

#82. My teacher, Hopkins, often commented on the craving for certainty that led so many physicists into mysticism or into the Church and similar organisations ... Faith seems to be an occupational hazard for physicists.

Norman Pirie

#83. I never cling on to hope or certainty. They're the enemies of peace.

Anthony Hopkins

#84. I know the exact date that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids. So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003.

Stephenie Meyer

#85. Mr. Dennis received this part of the scheme with a wry face, observing that as a general principle he objected to women altogether, as being unsafe and slippery persons on whom there was no calculating with any certainty, and who were never in the same mind for four-and-twenty hours at a stretch.

Charles Dickens

#86. The fatal hour of this ancient game is approaching. In its modern form this game will soon die a drawing death - the inevitable victory of certainty and mechanization will leave its stamp on the fate of chess.

Emanuel Lasker

#87. There are things you're certain about. That you'd bet your life on. Things that you just know. You know the heat of a fire will burn you. Water will quench your thirst. She is one of those things; the most unerring certainty of my life.

Katy Evans

#88. The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labors to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.

Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

#89. As for the accusation of intellectual pride, surely the boot is on the other foot. Atheists don't claim to know anything with certainty
it's the believers who know it all.

Barbara Smoker

#90. But no one can predict of a certainty what will happen. And none of it will change how I intend to spend the rest of my life. I will live it on my terms. And you ... you can have all of me or nothing. I won't be an invalid any longer. Not even if it means losing you.

Lisa Kleypas

#91. We don't know if he ever left England. We don't know who his principal companions were or how he amused himself. His sexuality is an irreconcilable mystery. On only a handful of days in his life can we say with absolute certainty where he was.

Bill Bryson

#92. The point is," Sid Morris says. "This. Now. Paint on your brush, wind at your back, my crappy studio. This is the only certainty. Here: your sensations; your body existing for its moment in time. Everything else is crap.

Kate Walbert

#93. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side?

George Orwell

#94. The certainty of our salvation rests on the character of God.

F.B. Meyer

#95. Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries have reached the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity and certainty of his judgments, that he cannot be partial in our favor.

John Woolman

#96. Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#97. The comfort of certainty and perfection vs. the fear of uncertainty and being suboptimal. This is the struggle.
Let me let you in on a secret: no one is free from this struggle.

Leo Babauta

#98. I do not rest on the broad upland of a system that includes a series of sure statements about the absolutes, but on a narrow, rocky ridge between the gulfs where there is no sureness of expressible knowledge but [only] the certainty of meeting what remains, undisclosed.

Martin Buber

#99. What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.

Benjamin Cardozo

#100. To go on and on about your soul is to miss the whole point of life. I could say that with more certainty if I knew the whole point of life.

Sheila Heti