Uncertainty Quotes

“Risk means 'shit happens' or 'good luck”
― Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“US General Mathew Ridgeway was speaking about “Operation Vulture”. He said, “When the day comes for me to meet my maker and account for my actions, the thing that I would be most proud of is the fact that I fought against and perhaps totally prevented the carrying out of one of the most hare-brained tactical schemes that would have cost the lives of thousands upon thousands of men!”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)”
― Michael G. Kramer

“It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.”
― Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life

“Whether it is good or evil, whether life in itself is pain or pleasure, whether it is uncertain-that it may perhaps be this is not important-but the unity of the world, the coherence of all events, the embracing of the big and the small from the same stream, from the same law of cause, of becoming and dying.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Sometimes the clouds weren't weightless. Sometimes their bellies got dark and full. It was life. It happened. It didn't mean it wasn't scary, or that I wasn't still afraid, but now I knew that as long as I was standing under it with Braden beside me when those clouds broke, I'd be alright. We'd get rained on together. Knowing Braden he'd have a big ass umbrela to shelter us from the worst of it. That there was an uncertain future I could handle.”
― Samantha Young, On Dublin Street

“Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

“The more you go with the flow of life and surrender the outcome to God, and the less you seek constant clarity, the more you will find that fabulous things start to show up in your life.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman–Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass: Embracing Singleness with Confidence

“And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding. Did I? For, if I did, I was wrong. I fyou won't take a chance, then the powers you refuse because you cannot explain them, will, as they say, make a monkey out of you.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.”
― Karl Von Clausewitz

“Wigmore turned towards the window. A column of armoured vehicles was making its way down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace. As he watched, he cursed himself for not remaining at the hotel. He looked at Merlin. ‘Very well. Go ahead with your bloody questions.”
― Mark Ellis, Death of an Officer

“I told Ersken, "Lately it's been like living on the knife's edge, never knowing which side I'll fall off on"
Ersken clapped me on the shoulder as we stepped into the street. "Cheer up, Beka. Maybe you were going to fall off that razor's edge before, but not today," he said, as good humored as always. "Today we're doing to jump.”
― Tamora Pierce, Bloodhound

“Even with all this power, it comes down to the same old things. Connections, money, influence.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“The death of God left the angels in a strange position.”
― Donald Barthelme

“But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.”
― Ron Rash, One Foot in Eden

“They say, "Look before you leap." So look. But do not look for too long. Do not look into the void of uncertainty trying to predict each and every possible outcome, to evaluate every possible mistake, to prevent each possible failure. Look for the opportunity to leap, and leap faster than your fear can grab you. Leap before you talk yourself out of it, before you convince yourself to set up a temporary camp that turns into a permanent delay on your journey into your own heart.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child's relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don't know as much as we think we know.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt.”
― Carlo Rovelli

“It is for your own good to love a dare-devil rather than a holy coward. A dare-devil is a unique devil, battling your fears, your pains, conquering your uncertainties, carrying you his arms, and flying out of the corrosive fire. The coward is a trickster serpent, which vanishes in your time of despair, and appears in time of equanimity.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“We spend so much time defending our choice to do this that it becomes hard to show any vulnerability at all. There's only so many times you can handle someone asking about your fall back for when things don't work before you start thinking that maybe the fall back should just be your plan.”
― Cora Carmack, Losing It

“Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't

“To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Discovering dance and its power to heal my soul played a key role in my survival.”
― Maria Nhambu, America's Daughter

“There is no such thing as immunity from the joy or pain of the past.”
― Maria Nhambu, America's Daughter

“I don't know why it is, Captain Short, but whenever you start agreeing with me, I get decidedly nervous.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“To try is to invite uncertainty. Where confidence goes, success usually follows.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars

“Even then, she knew that there is no such thing as sure. There is no absolute anything. The gods love to fuck with us.”
― Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

“Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.”
― Amos Tversky, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases