Certainty Quotes - Page 14

• I'm suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding.

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, People, Understanding

  "Transcript: Barack Obama and The God Factor Interview" by Cathleen Falsani, sojo.net. February 21, 2012.

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• Faith to me is having absolute certainty that God is in control of my life and that He has my best interests at heart.

  Dan Ellis

  Heart, Certainty In Life, God Is In Control

  "A conversation with Carolina Hurricanes goalie Dan Ellis". Interview with Chad Bonham, www.beliefnet.com. March 2013.

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• Self-development is the only thing that keeps a person from burning out. We all have many needs - the need for certainty, the need for variety, the need for significance, and the need for connection. But, ultimately, we must grow, and we must contribute in a meaningful way in order to feel fulfilled.

  Tony Robbins

  Meaningful, Self, Order

  Interview with Dr. Joe Blaes, www.dentaleconomics.com. February 1, 2000.

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• If there is any one skill that every professional must learn, it is how to brand himself or herself in the marketplace. A brand provides certainty to customers and lets them know that what they`re getting is the best. People don`t like to make decisions. Once we decide, for example, the kind of toothpaste we prefer, rarely do we change. We have to make so many decisions every day in our lives that most of us are overwhelmed.

  Tony Robbins

  Skills, People, Decision

  Interview with Dr. Joe Blaes, www.dentaleconomics.com. February 1, 2000.

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• Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Madness, Uncertainty, Consequence

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

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• I'm sure one of the frustrations of being a Western enthusiast of Japanese food and culture is you're confronted every day with the absolute certainty that you will die ignorant.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Frustration, Ignorant, Culture

  "Interview: Anthony Bourdain Is Ready To 'Get Jiro' With His New Food Focused Graphic Novel". Interview with Alex Zalben, www.mtv.com. June 26, 2012.

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• I'm not against religion in the sense that I feel I can't tolerate it, but I think written into the rubric of religion is the certainty of its own truth. And since there are 6,000 religions currently on the face of the earth, they can't all be right. And only the secular spirit can guarantee those freedoms and it's the secular spirit that they contest.

  Ian Mcewan

  Thinking, Earth, Rubrics

  Interview with Zadie Smith, www.believermag.com. August 2005.

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• The only unchangable certainty in life is that nothing is unchangable or certain.

  John F. Kennedy

  Wisdom, Fun, Certainty In Life

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• Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Writing, Self, Arrogant

  Source: www.newstatesman.com

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• I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me.... If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Vices, Soup, Facts

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• All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number. This truth (the only one) is for the strong alone. Weak-nerved minds insist on a finite universe, a last number; they need, in Nietzsche's words, "the crutches of certainty". The weak-nerved lack the strength to include themselves in the dialectic syllogism.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Strong

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• Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Learning, Destiny, Men

  "The Path of the Law" (1897)

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• A man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty.

  John Locke

  Ignorance, Men, Knowing

  John Locke, James Augustus St. John (1872). “Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding”, p.137

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• Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.

  Voltaire

  Motivational, Stupidity, Doubt

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• In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.

  George Leonard

  Life, Adversity, Order

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• Continually one faces the horrible matter of making decisions. The solution is, as far as possible, to avoid conscious rational decisions and choices; simply to do what you find yourself doing; to float in the great current of life with as little friction as possible; to allow things to settle themselves, as indeed they do with the most infallible certainty.

  Christopher Morley

  Decision, Choices, Finding Yourself

  CHRISTOPHER MORLEY (1923). “INWARD HO!”

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• Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.

  William Goldman

  Fields, Lucky, Motion Pictures

  William Goldman (2012). “Adventures in the Screen Trade”, p.32, Hachette UK

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• There were certain great principles involved in the organization of this earth, and one was that there might be a place provided whereon the children of our Heavenly Father could live and propagate their species and have bodies formed for the spirits to inhabit who were the children of God; for . . . He is the God and Father of the spirits of all flesh.

  John Taylor

  Children, Father, Organization

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• Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.

  John Adams

  Life, Years, President

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.281

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• Another error is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Errors, Two

  The Advancement of Learning bk. 1, ch. 5, sec. 8 (1605)

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• The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.

  William Law

  Christian, Religious, Soul

  William Law (1749). “I. The spirit of prayer; or, the soul rising out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity. In two parts ; 7,II. The way to divine knowledge; being several dialogues between Humanus, Academicus, Rusticus, and Theophilus”, p.4

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• Real dialogue is where two or more people become willing to suspend their certainty in each other's presence.

  David Bohm

  Real, Two, People

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• Doubt is not a very agreeable status, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

  Voltaire

  Doubt, Ridiculous

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• All I'm arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive, where there's no taboo against criticizing bad ideas, and where everyone who shows up, in order to get their ideas entertained, has to meet some obvious burdens of intellectual rigor and self-criticism and honesty-and when people fail to do that, we are free to stop listening to them. What religion has had up until this moment is a different set of rules that apply only to it, which is you have to respect my religious certainty even though I'm telling you I arrived at it irrationally.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Honesty, Self

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• The infinite reservoir of future grace is flowing back through the present into the ever-growing pool of past grace. The inexhaustible reservoir is invisible except through the promises. But the ever-enlarging pool of past grace is visible; and God means for the certainty and beauty and depth to strengthen our faith in future grace.

  John Piper

  Mean, Past, Grace

  John Piper (2012). “Future Grace, Revised Edition: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God”, p.100, Multnomah

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