Certainty Quotes - Page 25

• Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress.

  Lisa Randall

  Ideas, Progress, Exploration

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• The disciples are drawn to the high altars with magnetic certainty, knowing that a great Presence hovers over the ranges ... You were within the portals of the temple ... to enter the wilderness and seek, in the primal patterns of nature, a magical union with beauty.

  Ansel Adams

  Knowing, Earth, Unions

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• There's no certainty to the next couple of years, but people are paying attention now. And I want to put out a record when people are paying attention, because that's when it has the best chance of being heard.

  Andrew McMahon

  Couple, Years, People

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• First, the probable cause of AIDS has been found: a variant of a known human cancer virus. Second, not only has the agent been identified, but a new process has been developed to mass produce this virus. Thirdly, with the discovery of both the virus and this new process, we now have a blood test for AIDS. With a blood test, we can identify AIDS victims with essentially 100% certainty.

  Margaret Heckler

  Cancer, Discovery, Blood

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• Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It's not just a possibility. It is a certainty.

  Jean Shepherd

  Memories, Thinking, Years

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• Certainty a strange Ferris wheel of a statement!

  John Allen Paulos

  Ferris Wheels, Strange, Statements

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• If the Bible is uniquely and inerrantly inspired, then we have certainty; we may know real truth about God

  J. Sidlow Baxter

  Real, May, Inspired

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• That which is true must always remain true, though the applications may change greatly from generation to generation. It is the absence of such fundamental certainties, no doubt, that leads men into continual search for a satisfying religion, or that drives them away from their old religion.

  John Andreas Widtsoe

  Men, Doubt, Generations

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• That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!

  Jesse Ball

  Would Be, False Hope, Refuse

  FaceBook post by Jesse Ball from Jul 29, 2013

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• The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.

  Heinz Pagels

  People, Simplicity, Progress

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• I think that certainty is a closed door, It's the end of the conversation. Doubt is an open door.

  John Patrick Shanley

  Thinking, Doors, Doubt

  "John Patrick Shanley On Dogma And 'Doubt'". Interview with Steve Inskeep, Renee Montagne, www.npr.org. December 12, 2008.

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• Ideas which have been developed simultaneously or in immediate succession in the same mind mutually reproduce each other, and do this with greater ease in the direction of the original succession and with a certainty proportional to the frequency with which they were together

  Hermann Ebbinghaus

  Ideas, Mind, Together

  Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913). “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology”

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• The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail... You can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.

  Conor Cruise O'Brien

  Government, America, Failing

  New Republic, November 4, 1985.

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• Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.

  George Mason

  Taken, Men, People

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• We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.

  Tzvetan Todorov

  Struggle, Fighting, Names

  "Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century". Book by Tzvetan Todorov, 2003.

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• The quest for certainty in forecasting outcomes can be the enemy of progress.

  Nate Silver

  Enemy Of Progress, Quests, Outcomes

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• Somewhere in the back of my brain there exists this certainty: The body is no more than a costume, and can be changed at will. That the changing of bodies, like costumes, would make me into a different character, a character who might, finally, be alright.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Character, Brain, Costumes

  Marya Hornbacher (2009). “Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia”, p.30, Harper Collins

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• I don't believe anything. I only know some things to a greater degree of certainty than others.

  John Ryman

  Believe, Degrees, Belief

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• In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the questions cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.

  David Hume

  Determination, Philosophy, Mean

  David Hume (2010). “Moral and Political Philosophy”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

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• To be human : to strive in the face of the certainty of failure.

  Spider Robinson

  Life, Advice, Faces

  Spider Robinson (2013). “The Crazy Years”, p.148, BenBella Books, Inc.

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• Love must neither beg nor demand. Love must be strong enough to find certainty within itself. It then cease to be moved and becomes the mover.

  Hermann Hesse

  Strength, Strong, Demand

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• In philosophical terms, the opposite of rationalism is not irrationalism but empiricism, that is, a willingness to form beliefs on the basis of experience rather than from a priori deduction. Empirical evidence never yields the dogmatic certainty that accompanies logical deduction.

  John Quiggin

  Philosophical, Yield, Opposites

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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. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.

  Eugene Wigner

  Grateful, Law, Miracle

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

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• Can success change the human mechanism so completely between one dawn and another? Can it make one feel taller, more alive, handsomer, uncommonly gifted and indomitably secure with the certainty that this is the way life will always be? It can and it does!

  Moss Hart

  Life, Success, Dawn

  moss hart (1959). “act one”

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• Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Life, Morning, Looks

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Counsels and Maxims: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.34, 谷月社

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