Certainty Quotes - Page 24

• The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.

  Janet Frame

  Fall, Writing, Ego

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• As a new mother, I want to give my children the best start in life but millions of children affected with AIDS don't live with such certainty. We can all do something to give them a future worth living for. We can make a difference in a child's life by joining with UNICEF to ensure that mothers and children are given the treatment that they deserve, in order to live a life free from HIV and AIDS.

  Claudia Schiffer

  Mother, Children, Order

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• It is a certainty that Keegan would not have agreed to return unless Mike Ashley had committed to sanctioning a mammoth spending spree. The downside, which Keegan will soon discover, is the law of diminishing returns in a league that is now the richest in the world. The type of multi-million-pound investment that bankrolled the first Newcastle revival under Keegan is now two-a-penny. Buying success just isn't as easy as it used to be. The Premiership's paradox is that the more money there is, the more the art of management gains in value.

  Pete Gill

  Soccer, Football, Art

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• Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

  Lord Acton

  Exercise, Men, Influence And Power

  "Historical Essays and Studies". Book by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, oll.libertyfund.org. 1907.

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• ...the proposed air force and army experiments were designed so that many animals would suffer and die without any certainty that this suffering and death would save a single human life or benefit humans in any way at all; but the same can be said of millions of their experiments performed each year in the United States alone.

  Peter Singer

  Army, Animal, Years

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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• Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right, but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own.

  Ayn Rand

  Temptation, Facts, Judgment

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.613, Hamilton Books

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• I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity.

  M. C. Escher

  Beautiful, Fun, Two

  "Escher on Escher: exploring the infinite". Book by J. W. Vermeulen, H. N. Abrams, 1989.

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• There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.

  Jeremy Collier

  Ease, Reason, Insufficiency

  Jeremy COLLIER (the Nonjuror.), J. E. (1838). “Pearls of Great Price: or, Maxims, reflections, characters and thoughts, on miscellaneous subjects ... Selected from the works of the Rev. Jeremy Collier by the editor of “Sir William Jones's Discourses,” etc. [The editor's preface signed: J. E., i.e. James Elmes.]”, p.105

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• In the [John F.] Kennedy case, I believe the absence of a conspiracy can be proved to a virtual certainty.

  Vincent Bugliosi

  Believe, Absence, Conspiracy

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• For me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.

  Pico Iyer

  Home, Light, Luxury

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• What if the choice isn’t between certainties, between this faith and that, but between faith and doubt? Between renouncing the mystery and embracing it?

  R. Scott Bakker

  Choices, What If, Doubt

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• I think it’s fairly common for writers to be afflicted with two simultaneous yet contradictory delusions, the burning certainty that we’re unique geniuses, and the constant fear that we’re witless frauds who are speeding toward epic failure.

  Scott Lynch

  Unique, Thinking, Epic

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• We know next to nothing with any certainty about Pythagoras, except that he was not really called Pythagoras. The name by which he is known to us was probably a nickname bestowed by his followers. According to one source, it meant ‘He who spoke truth like an oracle’. Rather than entrust his mathematical and philosophical ideas to paper, Pythagoras is said to have expounded them before large crowds. The world’s most famous mathematician was also its first rhetorician.

  Daniel Tammet

  Philosophical, Names, Ideas

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• Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Beautiful, Stills, Uncertainty

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Map: Collected and Last Poems”, p.302, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt. Precisely because we keep questioning everything, especially our own premises, we are always ready to improve our knowledge. Therefore a good scientist is never ‘certain’. Lack of certainty is precisely what makes conclusions more reliable than the conclusions of those who are certain: because the good scientist will be ready to shift to a different point of view if better elements of evidence, or novel arguments emerge. Therefore certainty is not only something of no use, but is in fact damaging, if we value reliability.

  Carlo Rovelli

  Doors, Views, Doubt

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• Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained--a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.

  Chauncey Wright

  Philosophical, Character, Ideas

  Chauncey Wright (2003). “Philosphical Discussions”, p.47, A&C Black

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• One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone.

  Erma Bombeck

  Country, Travel, Fall

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• We can never be certain of our courage until we have faced danger.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Courage, Danger, Certain

  "Premier Supplément", 42, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations, p. 142-44, 1922.

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• There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more or less solved.

  Henri Poincare

  Knowledge, Math, Ontology

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• "I see it, but I don't believe it."

  Richard Dedekind

  Believe, Ontology, Statistics

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• If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Education, Numbers, Typewriters

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile”, p.1504, Random House

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• The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.

  Eugene Wigner

  Science, Law, Miracle

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.549, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Mathematical science is in my opinion an indivisible whole, an organism whose vitality is conditioned upon the connection of its parts.

  David Hilbert

  Ontology, Vitality, Connections

  "Mathematical Problems". Lecture delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris, translated by Maby Winton Newson, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1900.

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• Arithmetic is where the content lies, and not logic; but logic prompts certainty, and not arithmetic.

  David Berlinski

  Lying, Logic, Mathematics

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only es

  George Eliot

  Disappointment, Lying, Forever

  George Eliot (2006). “Daniel Deronda Volume Iii EasyRead Editi”, p.38, ReadHowYouWant.com

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