351 Uncertainty Quotes

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.

O tell me, friends, while yet we part, And heart can yet be heard of heart, O tell me then, for what is it Our early plan of life we quit; From all our old intentions range, And why does all so wholly change? O tell me, friends, while yet we part!

I've learned to accept birth and death . . . but sometimes I still worry about what lies between.

This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.

If bin Laden is in fact publicly killed, then the US military will find itself standing around with its hands in its pockets, wondering what's supposed to come next.

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.

Horror is always aware of its cause; terror never is. That is precisely what makes terror terrifying.

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.

The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.

There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life! - In tragic hints here see what evermore Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse, To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!

Chaos is perhaps at the bottom of everything.

The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.

We have some control over when we retire. However, we have very little control over how long we will live.

There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street.

No straight lines make up my life; And all my roads have bends; There's no clear-cut beginnings; And so far no dead-ends.

Many things are possible. Few things are certain.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

The best-laid plans of mice and comedians usually wind up on the cutting-room floor.

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.

I have known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeosis epoch from all earlier ones.

I am having a very difficult time. Things happen unexpectedly.

Anything you don't understand is dangerous until you do understand it.

I never got good at predicting what millions of people will suddenly decide is rational.

Obviously I was either onto something, or on something.

You don't need an explanation for everything, Recognize that there are such things as miracles -- events for which there are no ready explanations. Later knowledge may explain those events quite easily.

Oh! let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about!

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

Jack: Hey, wait a minute. What kind of make up is this?

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

I don't know where it's going, but I'm sticking with it!

Doubt grows with knowledge.

The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

Nobody really knows what you're feeling, what you're really going for, what you're really trying to do. Hell, I didn't even know what I was going for. I just knew that I didn't want to be assembly line. (2004)

Shit, I may be doing TV in ten years. Or doing fucking appearances at a hamburger stand dressed as Captain Jack, you know? (2004)

I like being confused, I enjoy the look it leaves on my face.

I do know that there are some things that exist in this world that you just can't prove. That could be the case with God or whoever might be up there, but I don't follow any one religion.

The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win.

We are really happy. But I am like anyone - no one knows how long marriage is going to last.

When Paul was arrested in Japan for having hash in his luggage, I thought he'd be out that night. But it became really serious stuff when he was kept in a cell. I became more fearful as the days went by.

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis. (p. 123)

As for extraordinary things, all the provision in the world would not suffice.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

We never know, believe me, when we have succeeded best.

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

'Are you sure?' I said that sure was just what I wasn't anything but.

Si se sabe exactamente lo que se va a hacer, ?para que hacerlo?.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.

I will never fully understand; that is the nature of such creatures. Or is this Inner Truth now, this that is happening to me? I will wait. I will see. Which it is. Perhaps it is both.

To be and not to be, that is the answer.

When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?

To-morrow it seem Like the empty words of a dream Remembered on waking.

Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure, this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed It's petals up.

I never have denied the immortality of the soul. I have simply been honest. I have said: 'I do not know.'

Pirsig's Postulate: The number of hypotheses available to explain any given phenomenon is infinite.

Luck was a joke. Even good luck was just bad luck with its hair combed.

Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities - the political, the religious, the educational authorities - who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing - forming in our minds - their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself.

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don't know where to go.

A year ago, we all were united in the joy over having broken free of totalitarianism. Today we all are made somewhat nervous by the burden of freedom. Our society is still in a state of shock. This shock could have been expected, but none of us expected it to be so profound. The old system collapsed, and a new one so far has not been built. Our social life is marked by a subliminal uncertainty over what kind of system we are going to build, how to build it, and whether we are able to build it at all.

There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

Possibly.

I have always been so sure - too sure... But now I am very humble and I say like a little child: 'I do not know...' ~ Hercule Poirot

Now comes the mystery.