#certainty

What makes us leave what we love best? What is it inside us that keeps erasing itself When we need it most, That sends us into uncertainty for its own sake And holds us flush there until we begin to love it And have to begin again? What is it within our own lives we decline to live Whenever we find it, making our days unendurable, And nights almost visionless? I still don't know yet, but I do it. ↗

— Charles Wright

#living #love #poem #poetry #self

It is an incurable act of desperation that men seek for certainty! It is like seeking for an unshakable place inside a shaking ship! ↗

— Mehmet Murat ildan

#men

The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty. ↗

— Nikos Kazantzakis

#human-nature #soul #uncertainty #nature

In some cases, I am able to respect what so many call bigots. Such people have a more solid foundation for drawing their lines when it comes to the security of their ways and quite possibly the security of mankind. They rely on something that has worked to get man this far without placing ideals blindly driven by emotion first; they have a sure line and they say, 'No.' That, in a sense, is something I find to be highly respectable. ↗

— Criss Jami

#bigotry #certainty #conviction #culture #emotions

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#ignorance #knowledge #open-mindedness #science #willful-ignorance

The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#always #appears #certainty #everyday #guise

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image. ↗

— Timothy Garton Ash

#certainty #days #direct #few #however

The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude. ↗

— Peter L. Berger

#beliefs #between #certitude #different #different beliefs

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things. ↗

— Denis Diderot

#certainty #confuse #different #different things #entirely

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were. ↗

— Hans Blix

#cent #certainty #could #existed #found