Uncertainty Quotes - Page 16

• We make pictures. At the end of the day, we create something potentially significant that did not exist at the beginning of the day. We go forward, despite the uncertainty. Because this is an act of love and passion, which defies reason and prudence.

  Joe McNally

  Photography, Passion, The End Of The Day

  10 Copy quote

• Economists have the correct insight that economics is a theory of choice, the key to the story is the variety of options and centralised political control limits the options. The best recipe is adaptive efficiency coping with novel uncertainty in a non-ergodic world, the maintenance of institutions which enable trial & error experiment to occur, and an effective means of eliminating unsuccessful solutions

  Douglass North

  Mean, Errors, Keys

  18 Copy quote

• We tend to think of dangers and uncertainties as anomalies in the continuum of life, or irruptions of unpredictable forces into a largely predictable world. I suggest the contrary: that dangers and uncertainties are an inescapable dimension of life. In fact, as we shall come to understand, they make life matter. They define what it means to be human.

  Arthur Kleinman

  Mean, Thinking, Anomalies

  Arthur Kleinman (2007). “What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger”, p.1, Oxford University Press

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty. Which provokes answers but doesn't give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine, beyond ideology, beyond authority.

  Sherrie Levine

  Art, Giving, Doubt

  36 Copy quote

• There's only one thing that can save a man from madness and that's uncertainty.

  Dmitry Glukhovsky

  Men, Madness, One Thing

  Dmitry Glukhovsky (2014). “METRO 2033: The cult bestseller behind the METRO LAST LIGHT and METRO 2033 video games”, p.189, Dmitry Glukhovskiy

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• In medicine, uncertainty is the water we swim in.

  Lisa Sanders

  Medicine, Water, Swim

  Lisa Sanders (2009). “Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis”, p.24, Harmony

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Roots, Maps, Littles

  Chang-rae Lee (2014). “On Such a Full Sea: A Novel”, p.98, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its purpose is to protect persons and property.... If you exceed this proper limit -- if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, or artistic -- you will then be lost in uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it on you.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Religious, Law, Acting

  27 Copy quote

• Men who no longer can make sure of the reality which they feel and experience through talking about it and sharing it with their fellow-men, live in the same nightmare of loneliness and uncertainty which, in a normal world, is the terrible fate of insanity.

  Hannah Arendt

  Loneliness, Fate, Reality

  9 Copy quote

• The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Believe, Men, Essence

  "The White House Years". Book by Henry Kissinger, 1979.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.

  David Mamet

  Acting, Way, Study

  8 Copy quote

• A religion is a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong--and you are strong. The great trouble with religion--any religion--is that the religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge these propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason--but one cannot have both.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Strong, Fire, Judging

  18 Copy quote

• When circumstances defy order, order should bend or break: anomalies and uncertainties give validity to architecture.

  Robert Venturi

  Order, Giving, Anomalies

  Robert Venturi, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1977). “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture”, p.41, The Museum of Modern Art

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life is infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination. It is the invisible essence and substance of every visible form. Its nature is goodness, truth, wisdom and beauty, as well as energy and imagination. Our highest satisfaction comes from a sense of conscious union with this invisible Life. All human endeavor is an attempt to get back to first principles, to find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty vanishes.

  Ernest Holmes

  Essence, Imagination, Creative

  Ernest Holmes (2007). “The Art of Life”, p.9, Penguin

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world, where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty. All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient. But there is a Supreme Being hidden therein as a Certainty, and one would be blessed if one could catch a glimpse of that Certainty and hitch one's waggon to it. The quest for that Truth is the summum bonum of life.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Blessed, Thinking, Glimpse

  Mahatma Gandhi (1948). “Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth”, p.223, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Climate helps to shape the character of peoples, certainly no people more than the English. The uncertainty of their climate has helped to make the English, a long-suffering, phlegmatic, patient people rather insensitive to surprise, stoical against storms,. slightly incredulous at every appearance of the sun, touched by the lyrical gratitude of someone who expects nothing and suddenly receives more than he dreamed.

  H. E. Bates

  Dream, Gratitude, Character

  25 Copy quote

• We must meet the uncertainties of this world with the certainty of the world to come.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Christian, Wisdom, World

  4 Copy quote

• The promises of God are His guarantees amid life's uncertainties. They're the basis of all our life of faith.

  David Jeremiah

  Christian, Promise, Guarantees

  8 Copy quote

• True, trust necessarily carries with it uncertainties, but we must force ourselves to think about these uncertainties as possibilities and opportunities, not as liabilities.

  Robert C. Solomon

  Trust, Opportunity, Thinking

  Robert C. Solomon, Fernando Flores (2003). “Building Trust: In Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life”, p.81, Oxford University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If any part of your uncertainty, is a conflict between your heart and your mind - follow your mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Heart, Mind, Conflict

  "Ayn Rand Novel Collection".

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• The door to God is the insecurity of not knowing anything. Bear the grace of that uncertainty and all wisdom will be yours.

  Adyashanti

  Spiritual, Knowing, Doors

  11 Copy quote

• Certainty is not biologically possible. We must learn (and teach our children) to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. Science has given us the language and tools of probabilities. We have methods for analyzing and ranking opinion according to their likelihood of correctness. That is enough.

  Robert A. Burton

  Children, Humility, Tools

  9 Copy quote

• All of you knowing now, Tthat the Buddhas, the Teachers of the Ages, In accord with what is peculiarly appropriate, have recourse to expedient devices, Need have no more doubts or uncertainties. Your hearts shall give rise to great joy, Since you know that you yourselves Shall become Buddhas.

  Gautama Buddha

  Teacher, Buddhist, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• Overcome your uncertainties and free yourself from dwelling on sorrow. When you delight in existence, you will awaken, and become a guide to those in need, revealing the path to many.

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Dwelling, Sorrow

  13 Copy quote

• I'm happy not knowing. Most of the time (except when I'm a neurotic mess about uncertainty) I feel glad that the horizon is a mystery.

  Leslie Jamison

  Knowing, Anxiety, Horizon

  7 Copy quote