Uncertainty And Doubt Quotes

Freely available, hardcore 21st-century pornography blasts through men's and women's sexual imaginations like antibiotics and kills all mystery, uncertainty, and doubt - good and bad. ~ Caitlin Moran

Youth
You're young and there's still so much ahead. So much uncertainty and doubt. It keeps you up at night - this wild, restless feeling. But you don't know how free you are. For this short, miraculous time, you have no one to answer to, nothing to lose. You belong wholly to yourself. And even though some days you wish your world would stop spinning for a second, to let you catch your breath - believe me, someday you're going to look back on this and you're going to miss this feeling ~ Lang Leav

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. ~ Erich Fromm

And what nags me about this is that the source of my anxiety was exactly what Kierkegaard says the source of anxiety is, and what he praised in direct proportion to the volume any person possesses: possibility. The awareness that life is a series of choices any one of which could be either aggrandizing or disastrous. That this happens to be true I have no trouble signing on to. Any who has lived past the age of ten knows that even piddling actions can wind up having big consequences, and that even when you are super-conscious of your behaviors you can't know how things are going to turn out in the short- or the long-run. That's the drama of it all. On the one hand, your very existence means you can and will change things in your life and others. On the other hand, you aren't God, so everything is always going to be drenched in uncertainty and doubt. ~ Daniel Smith

For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ... Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas ... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith. ~ Adolf Hitler

When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of uncertainty-some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. ~ Richard P. Feynman

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Your confidence, competence and belief will sustain you through the fear, uncertainty and doubt you will face. Knowing with everything you are, that you can do it. ~ Sarah Gerdes

Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security. ~ John Allen Paulos

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! ~ Douglas Adams

An educated man must have a "curiosity in exploring the unfamiliar and unexpected, an open-mindedness in entertaining opposing points of view, tolerance for the ambiguity that surrounds so many important issues, and a willingness to make the best decisions he can in the face of uncertainty and doubt". ~ Derek Bok

I just didn't understand. What should I do? What did I want to do? What was I thinking...? It didn't really matter if she died. That's what I thought. It's all the same in the end. The only difference is whether death comes sooner or later. Even if I do keep living, there will be only more suffering and more hardship. There's no meaning to it. There's no meaning to life. It would be better to die. This was a thoroughly logical conclusion that no one could refute. At least, I couldn't refute it. In fact, I doubt that anyone was less suited to the role of convincing someone else to give up on suicide than I was. ~ Tatsuhiko Takimoto

Gratitude is a fickle thing, indeed. A person taking aim presses the weapon to his chest and cheek, but when he hits, he discardsit with indifference. ~ Franz Grillparzer

Your life will no doubt find its own paths. That they be good ones, and rich and expansive, that I wish for you more than I can say. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Reason and Faith are not antithetical, but rather synergistic. ~ R. Alan Woods

No one can doubt, that the convention for the distinction of property, and for the stability of possession, is of all circumstances the most necessary to the establishment of human society, and that after the agreement for the fixing and observing of this rule, there remains little or nothing to be done towards settling a perfect harmony and concord. ~ David Hume

It is clear, then, that the desire for certainty shapes our spaces of possibility, our perceptions, and our lives both personally and professionally. Usually, this need saves us. But it also sabotages us. This produces an ongoing tension between what we might think of as our conscious selves and our automatic selves. To overcome our inborn reflex that pushes us to seek certainty (sometimes at any cost), we must lead with our conscious selves and tell ourselves a new story, one that with insistent practice will change our future past and even our physiological responses. We must create internal and external ecologies that… celebrate doubt!
This means the biggest obstacle to deviation and seeing differently isn't actually our environment as such, or our" intelligence, or even - ironically - the challenge of reaching the mythical "aha" moment. Rather, it is the nature of human perception itself, and in particular the perceived need for knowing. Yet the deep paradox is that the mechanisms of perception are also the process by which we can unlock powerful new perceptions and ways to deviate. Which means that mechanism of generating a perception is the blocker… and the process of creating perception is the enabler of creativity ~ Beau Lotto

There is no doubt that our nation's security and defeating terrorism trump all other priorities. ~ Arlen Specter

Regardless of how you came to doubt, doubt itself is not the problem, but what can be problematic and even tragic is what you do with your doubt. ~ Ben Young

Tibby's wish would be to hold on to the idea of love even in the face of darkest doubt. Because that was the way in which she failed. Not once, but again and again. ~ Ann Brashares

Said, as if there was never a doubt. I walked around and hugged April so tight she let out a small fart. ~ Dannika Dark

One day, John asked her to define sin. I doubt any theologian could have done better than she did: "Son, whatever weakens your reasoning, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes away your relish for spiritual things; in short, if anything increases the authority and power of the flesh over the Spirit, then that to you becomes sin, however good it is in itself."1That definition became the guiding beacon for John. He carved it into his consciousness. His mother inbred in him his sensitivity to sin. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness ~ Samuel Johnson

Fritz."
The butler rushed over from the crudité arrangement he was working on. "Yes, master! I am eager to be of aid."
"Take this." iAm peeled the cat off himself, prying both of its front claws out of his fleece. "And do whatever it is you do with it."
As he turned away, he felt like glancing back and making sure G*dd*mn was okay.
But why the fuck would he do that?
He had to get to Sal's and check on his staff. Usually he hit the restaurant in the early afternoon, but shit had not been "usual," what with that migraine: Every time his brother had one, they both got a headache. Now, though, with Trez rebounding and no doubt soon to be on the grind with that Chosen, it was time to get back on his own track. If only to keep himself from going psychotic.
Jesus Christ, Trez was now going to fuck that female. And God only knew where that was going to land them all.
Just as he hit the exit, he called out over his shoulder, "Fritz."
Through the din of First Meal prep, the doggen answered back, "Yes, master?"
"I never find any seafood in this place. Why is that?"
"The King does not favor any manner of fin."
"Would he allow it in here?"
"Oh, yes, master. Just not upon his table, and certainly never upon his plate."
iAm stared at the panels of the door in front of him. "I want you to get some fresh salmon and poach it. Tonight."
"But of course. I will not have it ready afore First Meal for you - "
~ J.R. Ward

Elvis was the king. No doubt about it. People like myself, Mick Jagger and all the others only followed in his footsteps. ~ Rod Stewart

You believe by doubting and you doubt by believing; yet this state too is not the final one. ~ Stanislaw Lem

We stood wrapped in each other's arms, taking comfort from our family below, yearning for the others we might never see again, at once at home and homeless, balanced on a knife edge of danger and uncertainty. But together. ~ Diana Gabaldon

We can start by living by the Spirit while we stop following the heart of discontentment and doubt. ~ Candace Cameron

They came to Virginia City as soon as the true value of the Comstock was perceived. They constituted, no doubt, a deplorable source of gambling, pleasure and embroilment. They were not soft-spoken women, their desire was not visibly separate from the main chance, and they would have beheld Mr. Harte's portrayal of them at Poker Flat with ribald mirth. But let them have a moment of respect. They civilized the Comstock. They drove through its streets reclining in lacquered broughams, displaying to male eyes fashions as close to Paris as any then current in New York. They were, in brick houses hung with tapestries, a glamour and a romance, after the superheated caverns of the mines. They enforced a code of behavior: one might be a hard-rock man outside their curtains but in their presence one was punctilious or one was hustled away. They brought Parisian cooking to the sagebrush of Sun Mountain and they taught the West to distinguish between tarantula juice and the bouquet of wines. An elegy for their passing. The West has neglected to mention them in bronze and its genealogies avoid comment on their marriages, conspicuous or obscure, but it owes them a here acknowledged debt for civilization. ~ Bernard DeVoto

You simplify because you cannot believe. You reduce; you diminish. Because you were raised to doubt and debunk. To reduce to a small set of knowns for easy digestion. Because you are a doctor, a man of science, and because this is America - where everything is known and understood, and God is a benevolent dictator, and the future must always be bright. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

I'm not what you think I am," I whispered desperately.
The Darkling stepped closer to me and said, his voice so low that only I could hear, "I doubt you have any idea what you are. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being. ~ Carl Jung

To this, Mrs. Nickleby only replied that she durst say she was very stupid, indeed she had no doubt she was, for her own children almost as much as told her so, every day of her life; to be sure she was a little older than they, and perhaps some foolish people might think she ought reasonably to know best. However, no doubt she was wrong; of course she was; she always was, she couldn't be right, she couldn't be expected to be; so she had better not expose herself any more; and to all Kate's conciliations and concessions for an hour ensuing, the good lady gave no other replies than Oh, certainly, why did they ask her?, her opinion was of no consequence, it didn't matter what she said, with many other rejoinders of the same class. ~ Charles Dickens

Inspiration moves one from Pessimism to Optimism, from Doubt to Faith, from Despair to Hope, and from Darkness to Light!-RVM ~ R.v.m.

She speaks much of her father; says she hears
There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
That carry but half sense.
(Ophelia) ~ William Shakespeare

Keeping people neurotic and depressed and ignorant and self-doubting is oppressive. ~ Susie Bright

The power of music, narrative and drama is of the greatest practical and theoretical importance. One may see this even in the case of idiots, with IQs below 20 and the extremest motor incompetence and bewilderment. Their uncouth movements may disappear in a moment with music and dancing - suddenly, with music, they know how to move. We see how the retarded, unable to perform fairly simple tasks involving perhaps four or five movements or procedures in sequence, can do these perfectly if they work to music - the sequence of movements they cannot hold as schemes being perfectly holdable as music, i.e. embedded in music. The same may be seen, very dramatically, in patients with severe frontal lobe damage and apraxia - an inability to do things, to retain the simplest motor sequences and programmes, even to walk, despite perfectly preserved intelligence in all other ways. This procedural defect, or motor idiocy, as one might call it, which completely defeats any ordinary system of rehabilitative instruction, vanishes at once if music is the instructor. All this, no doubt, is the rationale, or one of the rationales, of work songs. ~ Oliver Sacks

I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt, an important role in it. ~ Tim Hunt

Sixteen times a year, all thirty-two NFL teams give us what we're looking for: speed, skill, violence, fantasy league orgasms and a final score. No confusion. No doubt. No indecision. A winner and a loser. ~ Mike Barnicle

We stayed here for only a few hours. We rested and went on. But the camera snatched this fraction of a second from the eternal flow of time and froze it forever. At this moment we didn't know that in a few hours we would fall into an ambush. At this moment, while we were filling our canteens from the stream, we didn't yet know that we would stay in the mountains for three days without a drop of water. We didn't yet know anything … ~ Vladislav Tamarov

That there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those abnormal moments, that they really contained the highest synthesis of life, he could not doubt, nor even admit the possibility of doubt. He felt that they were not analogous to the fantastic and unreal dreams due to intoxication by hashish, opium or wine. Of that he could judge, when the attack was over. These instants were characterized--to define it in a word--by an intense quickening of the sense of personality. Since, in the last conscious moment preceding the attack, he could say to himself, with full understanding of his words: "I would give my whole life for this one instant," then doubtless to him it really was worth a lifetime. For the rest, he thought the dialectical part of his argument of little worth; he saw only too clearly that the result of these ecstatic moments was stupefaction, mental darkness, idiocy. No argument was possible on that point. His conclusion, his estimate of the "moment," doubtless contained some error, yet the reality of the sensation troubled him. What's more unanswerable than a fact? And this fact had occurred. The prince had confessed unreservedly to himself that the feeling of intense beatitude in that crowded moment made the moment worth a lifetime. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Einstein - the greatest Jew since Jesus. I have no doubt that Einstein's name will still be remembered and revered when Lloyd George, Foch and William Hohenzollern share with Charlie Chaplin that ineluctable oblivion which awaits the uncreative mind. ~ John B. S. Haldane

Tell me one thing. Has Rider Sinclair done something to hurt you in any way? If he has,I'll shoot that man!"
Willow was taken aback by Miriam's vehemence. "No,no," she hastily assured. "He might have hurt my feelings some but that's all."
"I noticed he wasn't being very gentlemanly, but I overlooked it because I thought perhaps he was still showing his temper over the Scofield incident."
"You're probably right. But, Miriam, this ain't, er,isn't about Sinclair, not entirely anyway. It's about me." Willow's smile was sad. "Being a man would be easier and a hell of a lot more fun but I ain't built right. So, I want you to teach me how to look and act like a fine and proper lady. You will, won't you?"
Merry chuckles bubbled and rolled out of Miriam. "Oh, Willow!" More chuckles. "I know I shouldn't laugh right now, but I can't help myself. You say the most awful things!"
Willow didn't know if she should be insulted or not, but since it was Miriam laughing at her, she gave her the benefit of the doubt. "I know my wanting to be a real lady is funny, but not that funny."
"No,no." Miriam laughed, gasping for breath. "No that, the part about you're not being built right. ~ Charlotte McPherren

There is no doubt that Putin is responsible for this crime, whether or not he gave the order to commit the murder [of Boris Nemtsov] himself. Putin created the conditions and atmosphere that have made this kind of thing possible. ~ Garry Kasparov