Certainty Quotes

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

But teleological considerations can lead no further than to a belief and a hope. They do not give certainty.

You can safely appeal to the United Nations in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.

If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.

The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. that It has not been accepted, because we've been in an anthropocentric era.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

What has always surprised me when I walk into a bookstore is the number of books that you can find that are written with certainty. The authors tell some story as though it's true, but they don't have any evidence that it is true!

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

The American people want us to stop spending. And so let's just give them some certainty. Let's extend the tax - the existing tax cuts. And then let's give some more tax breaks to small businesses and large. And then maybe the American people will have some confidence.

When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason, we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will be in that instant gone.

Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions.

A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing.

No one can forecast the economy with certainty.

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

I have moved from certainty to doubt, from devotion to rebellion.

Ideas which have been developed simultaneously or in immediate succession in the same mind mutually reproduce each other, and do this with greater ease in the direction of the original succession and with a certainty proportional to the frequency with which they were together.

I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty.

Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.

When I tested for Billy Budd, I had that kind of confidence that comes with the certainty that you're not going to get something. I was very rough around the edges.

And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of hellebore.

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.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.

It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.

I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.