Certainty Quotes - Page 7

• Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

  Vaclav Havel

  Hope, Hero, Giving

  "Vaclav Havel Dead: The Quotes Of The Man Who 'Lived In Truth'" by Paul Vale, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk. December 18, 2011.

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• Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.

  Henri Poincare

  Truth, Teaching, Science

  The Foundations of Science Science and Hypothesis (p. 127)

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• The reason that ego and love are not compatible comes down to this: you cannot take your ego into the unknown, where love wants to lead. If you follow love, your life will become uncertain, and the ego craves certainty.

  Deepak Chopra

  Love You, Ego, And Love

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• People, chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging to certainties... they live like ants.

  Bela Lugosi

  Life, Thinking, People

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• Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.

  Louis Aragon

  Truth, Errors, May

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• I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.

  Andreas Vesalius

  Science, Two, Scientific Method

  Letter on the China Root, quoted in "Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564" by Charles Donald O'Malley, 1964.

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• Just as the spectroscope opened up a new astronomy by enabling the astronomer to determine some of the constituents of which distant stars are composed, so the seismograph, recording the unfelt motion of distant earthquakes, enables us to see into the earth and determine its nature with as great a certainty, up to a certain point, as if we could drive a tunnel through it and take samples of the matter passed through.

  Richard Dixon Oldham

  Nature, Stars, Science

  "Geophysical Framework of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan" by M. N. Qureshy, CRC Press, (p. 150), 2005.

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• Facts are certainly the solid and true foundation of all sectors of nature study ... Reasoning must never find itself contradicting definite facts; but reasoning must allow us to distinguish, among facts that have been reported, those that we can fully believe, those that are questionable, and those that are false. It will not allow us to lend faith to those that are directly contrary to others whose certainty is known to us; it will not allow us to accept as true those that fly in the face of unquestionable principles.

  Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur

  Faith, Nature, Believe

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• While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Men, Average, Numbers

  Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Watson in The Sign of Four (1890).

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• I believe any decline would lock in a Fed increase with some certainty.

  Bruce Bartlett

  Believe, Locks, Increase

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• I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

  Hans Blix

  Zero, Military, Peculiar

  "Iraq Invasion Violated International Law: Blix". www.smh.com.au. August 07, 2003.

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• We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.

  William Herschel

  Science, America, Unseen

  The Living Age ..., Volume 169, p. 460, 1886.

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• If it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a man's character as shown both in inner and in outer actions, that every, even the least, incentive to these actions and all external occasions which affect them were so known to us that his future conduct could be predicted with as great a certainty as the occurrence of a solar or lunar eclipse, we could nevertheless still assert that the man is free.

  Immanuel Kant

  Character, Science, Men

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• A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.

  Jonathan Swift

  Kissing, Two, Chuck

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: With Copious Notes and Additions and a Memoir of the Author”, p.57

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• What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mean, Feelings, Charm

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• Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves.

  Bertrand Russell

  Foolish Man, Wisest Man, Thought Provoking

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Certainty without power can be interesting, even amusing. Certainty with power can be dangerous.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Interesting, Amusing, Dangerous

  Donald Rumsfeld (2011). “Known and Unknown: A Memoir”, p.149, Penguin

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• The present is the only reality and the only certainty.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Reality

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• The more I see the less I know for sure.

  John Lennon

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.

  John Henry Newman

  Creeps, Soar, Ifs

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• The neurotic has problems; the psychotic has solutions.

  Thomas Szasz

  Psychosis, Doubt, Neurosis

  Thomas Szasz (2017). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.141, Routledge

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• The more I see, the less I know.

  Michael Franti

  Deep Life, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Great Beatles

  Song: Say Hey, Album: All Rebel Rockers

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• You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life's pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with - no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.

  Gregory Benford

  Pain, Ignorance, Everyday

  "Timescape". Book by Gregory Benford, 1980.

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• Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Lying, Past, Quirky

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.

  Josh Billings

  Life, Time, Long

  Josh Billings (1972). “Uncle Sam's Uncle Josh: Or, Josh Billings on Practically Everything, Distilled from Josh's Rum and Tansy New England Wit by Donald Day”

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