401 Quotes About Certainty

I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

Yet it is unassailably true that so long as we lack omniscience and do not know all of the future, all our generalizations are fallible or only probable. And the history of human error shows that a general consensus, or widespread and unquestioned feeling of certainty, does not preclude the possibility that the future may show us to be in error.

Ambiguity supposes eventual resolution of itself whereas certitude implies further ambiguity.

The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.

A sensible man may fear certain possibilities, but don’t let fear turn possibility into certainty.

Gradually I began to understand that it does not matter very much what problem, whether big or small, is tormenting us; the only thing that matters it that we be tormented, that we find a ground for being tormented. In other words, that we exercise our minds in order to keep certainty from turning us into idiots, that we fight to open every closed door we find in front of us.

The rich world of his ancestors set the standards for Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s own life. It gave him a certainty of judgment and manner that cannot be acquired in a single generation.

Fairy tales end happily ever after because children crave certainly and resolution; they need to know how things turn out. But if my experiences in the past three months have shown me anything, it's that I am comfortable living with more questions than answers. My own story will always be a work in progress.

...wouldn’t God be more interested in being with the less favored child than the one that already has it figured out?