Certainty Quotes - Page 22

• There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.

  Tim O'Brien

  Loss, Abiding

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ... 'Finn?' '"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange)

  Julian Barnes

  Memories, Lying, Self

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• it is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime

  Michel Foucault

  Punishment, Crime, Discouraging

  Michel Foucault (2012). “Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison”, p.9, Vintage

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• I started having doubts right on top of my certainty.

  David James Duncan

  Doubt

  David James Duncan (2010). “The Brothers K”, p.40, Dial Press

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• Not all is certainty in our world, Karigan. If it were there'd be no opportunity for faith; and then it would be a very dull existence.

  Kristen Britain

  Opportunity, Our World, Would Be

  Kristen Britain (2007). “The High King's Tomb: Book Three of Green Rider”, p.467, Penguin

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• On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will seperate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties?

  Charles Dickens

  Pain, Hands, Years

  Charles Dickens (1841). “Master Humphrey's Clock”, p.121

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• If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.

  Toni Morrison

  Anticipation, Ifs

  Toni Morrison (2014). “The Bluest Eye”, p.8, Random House

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• The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.

  Alan Watts

  Real, Insecure, Hands

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Honesty, Men, Gains

  "The Paradoxes of Legal Science". Book by Benjamin N. Cardozo, 1928.

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• Science is not marginal. Like art, it is a universal possession of humanity, and scientific knowledge has become a vital part of our species' repertory. It comprises what we know of the material world with reasonable certainty. . . . Thanks to science and technology, access to factual information of all kinds is rising exponentially.

  E. O. Wilson

  Art, Technology, Humanity

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• There is a science of getting rich, and it is an exact science, like algebra or arithmetic. There are certain laws which govern the process of acquiring riches, and once these laws are learned and obeyed by anyone, that person will get rich with mathematical certainty.

  Wallace D. Wattles

  Law, Riches, Arithmetic

  Wallace D. Wattles, Dr. Robert C. Worstell, Louis M. Grafe, N. H. Moos, John McDonald “Get Rich In Spite of Yourself Collection - An "If You Can Count to Four..." Reference”, Lulu.com

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• Pour the bulk of your time into action, not deciding. The state of indecision is a major time waster. Don't spend more than 60 seconds in that state if you can avoid it. Make a firm, immediate decision, and move from uncertainty to certainty to action. Let the world tell you when you're wrong, and you'll soon build enough experience to make accurate, intelligent decisions.

  Steve Pavlina

  Moving, Intelligent, Decision

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• If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don't abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.

  Rumi

  Courage, Real, Fire

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• Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.

  Harry Browne

  Past, Liberty, Libertarian

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• Your good mother tells me you are feeling very badly in your new situation. Allow me to assure you it is a perfect certainty that you will, very soon, feel better - quite happy - if you only stick to the resolution you have taken to procure a military education.... On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Mother, Perseverance, Giving Up

  Abraham Lincoln, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “Abraham Lincoln's Wit & Wisdom”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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• So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.

  Seneca the Younger

  Punishment, Energy, Limits

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• It is to them [fossils] alone that we owe the commencement of even a Theory of the Earth ... By them we are enabled to ascertain, with the utmost certainty, that our earth has not always been covered over by the same external crust, because we are thoroughly assured that the organized bodies to which these fossil remains belong must have lived upon the surface before they came to be buried, as they now are, at a great depth.

  Georges Cuvier

  Science, Depth, Body

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• All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Death, Knowledge, Science

  Maurice Maeterlinck (1913). “Our Eternity”

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• I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge - knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  "The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method".

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• What is known for certain is dull.

  Max Perutz

  Knowledge, Science, Dull

  "I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier". Book by Igor F. Tsigelny, p. 314, 1998.

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• Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Thinking, Views

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• The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Objectivity, Idols

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.280, Routledge

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• Good applied science in medicine, as in physics, requires a high degree of certainty about the basic facts at hand, and especially about their meaning, and we have not yet reached this point for most of medicine.

  Lewis Thomas

  Science, Hands, Medicine

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• [I]f in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics, in so far as disposed through it we are able to reach certainty in other sciences and truth by the exclusion of error.

  Roger Bacon

  Truth, Science, Errors

  Opus Majus bk. 1, ch. 4 (ca. 1267) (translation by Robert Burke)

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• There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Men, Doubt

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.236, Ravenio Books

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