Certainty Quotes - Page 13

• People fear leaving their safe harbor of the known and venturing off into the unknown. Human beings crave certainty - even when it limits them.

  Robin Sharma

  People, Leaving, Safe

  Robin Sharma (2006). “The Greatness Guide: One of the World's Most Successful Coaches Shares His Secrets for Personal and Business Mastery”, p.47, Jaico Publishing House

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• I speak "with absolute certainty" only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any "authority" let alone "divine revelation"!

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Believe, Doe, Would Be

  Collected Writings, Volume XI, p. 466, www.katinkahesselink.net. October 1889.

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• We are often less grieved at disappointments than at ourselves for having said much concerning the certainty of our expectations.

  Norm MacDonald

  Disappointment, Expectations, Said

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• until it had been clearly explained that men were always and always partly wrong in all their ideas, life would be full of poison and secret bitterness. Men fight about their philosophies and religions, there is no certainty in them; but their contempt for women is flawless and unanimous.

  Dorothy Richardson

  Philosophy, Fighting, Men

  Dorothy Miller Richardson (1967). “Pilgrimage”

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• Deep down in everyone was sorrow and certainty.

  Dorothy Richardson

  Sorrow, Deep Down

  Dorothy Miller Richardson (1919). “Honeycomb”

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• There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.

  P. D. James

  Country, Two, Decision

  P. D. James (2011). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.104, Faber & Faber

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• It takes twenty or so years before a mother can know with any certainty how effective her theories have been--and even then thereare surprises. The daily newspapers raise the most frightening questions of all for a mother of sons: Could my once sweet babes ever become violent men? Are my sons really who I think they are?

  Mary Blakely

  Mother, Sweet, Son

  Mary Kay Blakely (1995). “American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• Just because someone seems to have more certainty, doesn't mean they're right.

  Tony Robbins

  Mean, Seems

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• The only certainty is that there is no certainty.

  Robert Rubin

  Investing

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• The attitude of mourning is a faithless attitude, an ignorant attitude. The more we know, the more fully we shall trust, for we shall feel with utter certainty that we and our dead are alike in the hands of perfect Power and perfect Wisdom, directed by perfect Love.

  Charles Webster Leadbeater

  Death, Attitude, Hands

  Charles Webster Leadbeater (1997). “The Other Side of Death: Scientifically Examined and Carefully Described”, Kessinger Publishing

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• Full employment does not mean literally no unemployment; that is to say, it does not mean that every man and woman in the country who is fit and free for work is employed productively every day of his or her working life ... Full employment means that unemployment is reduced to short intervals of standing by, with the certainty that very soon one will be wanted in one's old job again or will be wanted in a new job that is within one's powers.

  William Beveridge

  Country, Jobs, Mean

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• If men would only take the chances of doing right because it is right, instead of the immediate certainty of the advantage of doing wrong, how much happier would their lives be.

  Benjamin Haydon

  Men, Chance, Life Is

  Benjamin Robert Haydon (1876). “Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-talk”, p.418

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• The best antidote against evils of all kinds, against the evil thoughts that haunt the soul, against the needless perplexities which distract the conscience, is to keep hold of the good we have. Impure thoughts will not stand against pure words and prayers and deeds. Little doubts will not avail against great certainties. Fix your affections on things above, and then you will less and less be troubled by the cares, the temptations, the troubles of things on earth.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  Prayer, Evil, Temptation

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 214), 1895.

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• 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

  Mean, Mind, Gains

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• Man's quest for knowledge is an expanding series whose limit is infinity, but philosophy seeks to attain that limit at one blow, by a short circuit providing the certainty of complete and inalterable truth. Science meanwhile advances at its gradual pace, often slowing to a crawl, and for periods it even walks in place, but eventually it reaches the various ultimate trenches dug by philosophical thought, and, quite heedless of the fact that it is not supposed to be able to cross those final barriers to the intellect, goes right on.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  Stanislaw Lem (1984). “His Master's Voice”, p.36, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The certainty of death and the uncertainty of the hour of death is a source of grief throughout our life.

  Edgar Morin

  Grief, Certainty Of Death, Life And Death

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• ritual lulls our fear of disorder with the certainty of order.

  E. M. Broner

  Order, Ritual, Lulls

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• A great advantage of X-ray analysis as a method of chemical structure analysis is its power to show some totally unexpected and surprising structure with, at the same time, complete certainty.

  Dorothy Hodgkin

  Rays, Analysis, Unexpected

  Dorothy Hodgkin, Guy Dodson (1994). “The collected works of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin”

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• 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

  Optimistic, Biblical, Past

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• For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
  A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.
  Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man;
  But it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool.
  I never made a mistake in my life;
  At least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards

  Rudyard Kipling

  Clever, Mistake, Men

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• Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Hands, Care

  Edmund Burke (1834). “The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke: With a Biographical and Critical Introduction, and Portrait After Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.498

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• 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

  Love, Heart, Heaven

  Saint Augustine, Henry Chadwick (2008). “The Confessions”, p.183, Oxford Paperbacks

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• What I need most of all is certainty.

  Milan Kundera

  Needs

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• Very few people would choose to have even the most fabled assortment of goods if it meant getting cancer within the year. But the choice involves not the certainty of cancer very soon but an increased probability of cancer at some time in the future. The cancers are no less real; millions will die painfully and prematurely because of what we do to our environment. But the choice is not an easily visualizable one, and our capacity of denial comes strongly into play - as it tends to whenever we must weigh future costs against immediate benefits.

  Paul L Wachtel

  Real, Cancer, Years

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• Fundamentalists believe that we don't believe in anything. In their view of the world, they are in possession of absolute certainties, while we are descending into decadence. We will be able to triumph over terrorism not by waging war on it, but through a conscious, fearless way of life.

  Salman Rushdie

  War, Believe, Views

  "'Terror Is Glamour'". Spiegel Interview, www.spiegel.de. August 28, 2006.

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