Quotes on Certainty

The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.

Author: Hannah Arendt

If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.

Author: William Barclay

We have to be mindful that there is the certainty that terrorists will attempt to launch multiple attacks against their enemy, which is us and our allies.

Author: Cofer Black

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

Author: Thomas Carlyle

We regard it as a certainty that the earth, enclosed between poles, is bounded by a spherical surface.

Author: Nicolaus Copernicus

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

Author: Michael Crichton

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.

Author: Denis Diderot

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

Author: Phil Donahue

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

Author: Richard Dreyfuss

We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.

Author: Peter Drucker

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

Author: Will Durant

Could we have prevented in 100% certainty? I don't think anything is that certain. However, we would have had a very, very good chance for preventing it.

Author: Sibel Edmonds

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.

Author: Loren Eiseley

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

Author: Pliny Elder

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Author: Pliny Elder

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

Author: George Eliot

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

Author: Erich Fromm

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

Author: William Gibson

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

Author: Bret Harte

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Author: Oliver Holmes, Jr.

When we deal with questions relating to principles of law and their applications, we do not suddenly rise into a stratosphere of icy certainty.

Author: Charles Hughes

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

Author: Rudyard Kipling

The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.

Author: Rem Koolhaas

Step by step a powerful and enterprising race has driven them back from the Atlantic to the West until at last there is scarcely a spot of ground upon which the Indians have any certainty of maintaining a permanent abode.

Author: Nelson Miles

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

Author: Conor O'Brien

It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.

Author: Henri Poincare

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.

Author: Salvatore Quasimodo

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

Author: Francois Rochefoucauld

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

Author: Bertrand Russell

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

Author: May Sarton

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.

Author: Terence Stamp

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

Author: Stanislaus Stanislaus I

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.

Author: Thomas Szasz

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Author: Voltaire

I would say that without any doubt he's the killer - the law says beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty which I - there's no question that he was the killer of President Kennedy.

Author: Henry Wade

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.

Author: John Woolman

Where there is love, there is no question.

Author: Albert Einstein

The secret to creativity is the courage to let go of certainties.

Author: Maya Angelou

Success is not guaranteed, but neither is failure. The only certainty is the effort you put in every step of the way.

Author: Julia Hoffman