Certainty Quotes - Page 16

• All men have a feeling, that they would rather you told them a civil lie than give them a point blank refusal.... If you make a promise, the thing is still uncertain, depends on a future day, and concerns but few people; but if you refuse you alienate people to a certainty and at once, and many people too.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Lying, Men, People

  "The Treatises of M. T. Cicero" by C. D. Yonge, On Standing for the Consulship, section 12, p. 499, 500, 1872.

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• The only certainty about following the crowd is that you will all get there together.

  Mychal Wynn

  Together, Following The Crowd, Crowds

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• I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Infinite, Absurd, Walking

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• Digital television is no longer a probability, it is a certainty.

  Tessa Jowell

  Television, Digital, Probability

  "BBC footing digital bill for poor". Speech at the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention, www.imdb.com. September 15, 2005.

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• both doubt and certainty are as contagious as the common cold

  Kathryn Schulz

  Doubt, Common, Cold

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• I never cling on to hope or certainty. They're the enemies of peace.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Enemy

  "Actor Sir Anthony Hopkins". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. January 27, 2011.

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• One must treat theory-in-use as both a psychological certainty and an intellectual hypothesis.

  Chris Argyris

  Intellectual, Use, Psychological

  Chris Argyris, Donald A. Schön (1974). “Theory in practice: increasing professional effectiveness”, Jossey-Bass

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• It's good to have some certainty in life, even if it's only that I'm in deep trouble.

  Ashleigh Brilliant

  Certainty In Life, Trouble, Ifs

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• One of the most basic and pervasive social processes is the sorting and labeling of things, activities, and people... Sorting and labeling processes involve a trade-off of costs and benefits. In general, the more finely the sorting is done, the greater the benefits - and the costs... Sorting and labeling, whether of people or of things, is a sorting and labeling of probabilities rather than of certainties.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Cost, Done

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• If we are to reach certainty and true autonomy of realization, we need to be willing to be heretics. What's more, we need to become universal heretics, not believing anything that we do not know from direct experience, beyond stories, beyond hearsay, and even beyond the mind.

  A. H. Almaas

  Believe, Mind, Realization

  A. H. Almaas (2011). “Diamond Heart: Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery”, p.63, Shambhala Publications

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• Science deals in evidence and uncertainty. Religion deals in certainty without evidence.

  David Milne

  Evidence, Deals, Uncertainty

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• When you believe you have found an important scientific fact, and are feverishly curious to publish it, constrain yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, fight yourself, try and ruin your own experiments, and only proclaim your discovery after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses. But when, after so many efforts you have at last arrived at a certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human soul.

  Louis Pasteur

  Believe, Fighting, Discovery

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• Lack of self-confidence is, more often than not, simple laziness. We feel confused and uncertain because we do not know. But instead of making the effort to investigate, we procrastinate and worry. We tell ourselves we can't instead of learning how we can. If we used the mental energy we expend in worry and fear to get out and find out about what we do not know, we would see our self-confidence grow. Lack of self-confidence is not overcome by faith, but by action. It is a lack, not of certainty, but of effort. Too often we are certain that we can't before we give ourselves a fair chance.

  Laurence Boldt

  Confused, Self Confidence, Simple

  Laurence G. Boldt (1999). “Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design”, p.941, Penguin

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• There is no inherent mechanism in our present system which can with certainty prevent competitive sectional bargaining for wages from setting up a vicious spiral of rising prices under full employment.

  William Beveridge

  Rising Prices, Employment, Wages

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• [Heraclitus had] the highest form of pride [stemming] from a certainty of belief in the truth as grasped by himself alone. He brings this form, by its excessive development, into a sublime pathos by involuntary identification of himself with his truth.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Pride, Sublime, Development

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Greg Whitlock (2001). “The Pre-Platonic Philosophers”, p.55, University of Illinois Press

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• [Heraclitus had] a regal air of certainty.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Air, Regal

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• Revolution is the only thing, the only power, that ever worked out freedom for any people. The powers that have ruled long and learned to love ruling, will never give up that prerogative until they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow and destruction if they do not. To plant-to revolutionize-these are the twin stars that have ruled our pathway. What have we then to dread in the word Revolution-we, the children of rebels!

  Wendell Phillips

  Stars, Children, Giving Up

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• Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.

  Richard Stallman

  Choices, Decision, Suffering

  Slashdot interview, news.slashdot.org. May 1, 2000.

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• Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

  Walt Whitman

  School, Reality, Sight

  Walt Whitman (2012). “Selected Poems”, p.33, Courier Corporation

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• Can you predict the future with absolute certainty? Your answer must be no. You have two options: You can either decide to accept yourself as an imperfect human being with limited knowledge and realize that you will at times make mistakes, or you can hate yourself for it.

  David D. Burns

  Hate, Mistake, Two

  Source: time.com

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• The issue here is this, that the Government's argument at the present moment is the argument that now the war is over, terrorism is defeated, we have to focus on economic development which in the north and east particular, being the areas where the war was fought, development has to proceed at a pace. That people from those parts of the country are leaving seems to suggest a lack of confidence and certainty in the trajectory of this kind of economic development.

  Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu

  Country, War, Government

  Source: www.sbs.com.au

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• Whether history will judge this war to be different or not we cannot say. But this we can say with certainty: A government and a society that silences those who dissent is one that has lost its way.

  Henry Steele Commager

  War, Government, Judging

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• I know nothing but the certainty of my own ignorance.

  Socrates

  Ignorance, My Own, Knows

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• In practice, some come to see easily, some with difficulty. But whatever the case, never mind. Difficult or easy, the Buddha said not to be heedless. Just that--don't be heedless. Why? Because life is not certain. Wherever we start to think that things are certain, uncertainty is lurking right there. Heedlessness is just holding things as certain. It is grasping at certainty where there is no certainty and looking for truth in things that are not true. Be careful! They are likely to bite you sometime in the future!

  Ajahn Chah

  Thinking, Practice, Mind

  Ajahn Chah (2001). “Being Dharma: The Essence of the Buddha's Teachings”, p.9, Shambhala Publications

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• Whenever a man is known to seek promotion by intrigue, by temporizing, or by resorting to the haunts of vulgarity and vice for support, it may be inferred, with moral certainty, that he is not a man of real respectability, nor is he entitled to public confidence.

  Noah Webster

  Real, Men, Support

  Noah Webster (1823). “Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education: To which is Subjoined a Brief History of the United States”, p.19

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