Selected uncertainty quotes

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

2. 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.

3. I don't know where the artificial stops and the real starts.

4. 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!

5. I always like to know what I'm doing, but there are times when nobody will tell me.

6. One thing you can rely on is that there will always be uncertainty.

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

8. My life shows a clear pattern of total unpredictability.

9. My main object in life is to see what will happen next.

10. Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

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

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

16. We may not know the whole story in our lifetime.

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

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

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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!

22. Chaos is perhaps at the bottom of everything.

23. 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.

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

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. Many things are possible. Few things are certain.

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

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

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

31. There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

40. Obviously I was either onto something, or on something.

41. There is no safety. Only varying states of risk. And failure.

42. O grandes e gravissimos perigos! O caminho de vida nunca certo: Que aonde a gente poe sua esperanca, Tenha a vida tao pouca seguranca! No mar tanta tormenta, e tanto dano, Tantas vezes a morte apercebida! Na terra tanta guerra, tanto engano, Tanta necessidade avorrecida! Onde pode acolher-se um fraco humano, Onde tera segura a curta vida, Que nao se arme, e se indigne o Ceu sereno Contra um bicho da terra tao pequeno?

43. A votary of truth is often obliged to grope in the dark.

44. Probable nor'east to sou'west winds, varying to the soutard and westard and eastard and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping round from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes with thunder and lightning.

45. A casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known.

46. Lets say I'm a suspector. I suspect there may be someone who cares what happens to us. That's one step better than merely wishing. And one step below hoping.

47. They would not meet, but they would pass close to each other. She would notice him or not. He would speak to her or not. She still loved and needed him. Or not.

48. You aren't very good at determining what other people want and need from you... No one is. We're all as likely to hurt as help.

49. [He] didn't know what to say. He didn't even know the name for what he was feeling. 'I think that I don't know you.' she looked at him, a little perplexed. 'No that's wrong. I think that I didn't know you before, even though I thought I knew you, and know that I finally know you, I don't really know you at all.'

50. You don't understand everything, but you still make decisions. Well, we don't understand everything, either. But we decided didn't we? And we made the right choice, didn't we?

51. Faithfulness had taken me by surprise. I wondered how long the phase would last.

52. I'm on my way, I don't know where I'm goin', I'm on my way, I'm takin' my time, but I don't know where. Goodbye to Rosie, the Queen of Corona See you, me and Julio down by the schoolyard.

53. There were incidents and accidents There were hints and allegations...

54. And even if. I don't know what the day will bring. Still I can tell most anything. To a girl like you. ~ 'A Girl Like You'

55. I've twisted and turned them every way, And can see no ending to our play.

56. So I have these occasional visions that may or may not come true. [to Nikki Logan]

57. It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount.

58. I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can't figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

59. We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified-how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

60. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.

61. What does it mean, to understand? ... I don't know.

62. Consider: the darkening ease, the brightening trouble; the pleasure pleasure because it was, the pain pain because it shall be; the glad acts grown proud, the proud acts growing stubborn; the panting and trembling towards a being gone, a being to come; and the true true no longer, and the false true not yet. And to decide not to smile after all, sitting in the shade, hearing the cicadas, wishing it were night, wishing it were morning, saying, No, it is not the heart, no, it is not the liver, no, it is not the prostate, no, it is not the ovaries, no, it is muscular, it is nervous.

63. I felt weak, perhaps I was.

64. 'The first challenge is that we cannot generalise about India. One of the few generalisations that can safely be made about India is that nothing can be taken for granted about the country.' - Shashi Tharoor at the recently concluded PANIIT 2006 in Bombay.

65. There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation.

66. Our discombobulated lives need to sink some anchors in numerical stability. (I still have not recovered from the rise of a pound of hamburger at the supermarket to more than a buck.)

67. The history of a species, or any natural phenomenon that requires unbroken continuity in a world of trouble, works like a batting streak. All are games of a gambler playing with a limited stake against a house with infinite resources. The gambler must eventually go bust. His aim can only be to stick around as long as possible, to have some fun while he's at it, and, if he happens to be a moral agent as well, to worry about staying the course with honor.

68. All of a sudden I had to remember some words that Marlowe had told me over fifteen years ago: 'Dead men don't wear plaid.' Hmm... Dead men don't wear plaid. I still don't know what it means.

69. Ante paucos quam occideretur menses cornix in Capitolino elocuta est: ????? ????? ?????, nec defuit qui ostentum sic interpretaretur: Nuper Tarpeio quae sedit culmine cornix, 'Est bene' non potuit dicere, dixit: 'Erit.'

70. Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, 'Whither does this new current tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How does it stand towards my past?'

71. I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything... but I don't see my way to your conclusion.

72. I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.

73. It's hard to say who you are these days but you run on anyway, don't you baby?

74. Waiting for the sun to shine And you know sometimes it gets so painful Just like talking to yourself When everything don't seem to have no rhyme or reason we all go Do do loo do do, do do loo do do Waiting for the sun to shine.

75. 'Well that remains to be seen'

76. I know that timid breathing. Where Do I begin and end? And where, As I strum the thing, do I pick up That which momentously declares Itself not to be I and yet Must be. It could be nothing else.

77. The fluctuations of certainty, the change Of degrees of perception in the scholar's dark.

78. I'm not sure what to do with my hands.

79. At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare posessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

80. People often forget that in 1940 there was no guarantee that we were going to win.

81. Anything can happen. The seeds are numbers, really. That's all they really are. There's definitely some truth to the top seeds. But on any given day, anybody can win.

82. There is order in chaos, and certainty in doubt. The wise are guided by this order and certainty.

83. The chapter of knowledge is a very short, but the chapter of accidents is a very long one.

84. Aries... I always feel like I'm saying that wrong.

85. Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Turn and face the strange

86. ...loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

87. Could Hope inspect her Basis Her Craft were done - Has a fictitious Charter Or it has none - Balked in the vastest instance But to renew - Felled but by one assassin - Prosperity -

88. My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

89. As we advance we find more and more frequently that we can in fact ascertain only some but not all the particular circumstances which determine the outcome of a given process; and in consequence we are able to predict only some but not all the properties of the result we have to expect. Often all that we shall be able to predict will be some abstract characteristic of the pattern that will appear - relations between kinds of elements about which individually we know very little. Yet, as I am anxious to repeat, we will still achieve predictions which can be falsified and which therefore are of empirical significance. Of course, compared with the precise predictions we have learnt to expect in the physical sciences, this sort of mere pattern predictions is a second best with which one does not like to have to be content. Yet the danger of which I want to warn is precisely the belief that in order to have a claim to be accepted as scientific it is necessary to achieve more. This way lies charlatanism and worse. To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

90. ...a detailed mathematical discussion shows that whatever kind of wave-packet we select to represent the electron, the product of the two uncertainties of position and momentum can never be less than h, which is precisely what Heisenberg found...

91. I am standing in the wings of a theatre waiting for my cue to go onstage. As I stand there I can hear the play proceeding, and suddenly it dawns on me that the lines I have learnt are not in this play at all, but belong to quite a different one. Panic seizes me; I wonder frenziedly what should I do. Then I get my cue. Stumbling, falling over the unfamiliar scenery, I make my way onto the stage, and then look for guidance to the prompter, whose head i can just see rising out of the floor-boards. Alas he only signals helplessly to me and I realise of course that his script is different from mine. I begin to speak my lines, but they are incomprehensible to the other actors and abhorrent to the audience, who begins to his and shout: 'Get off the stage!', 'Let the play go on!', 'You're interrupting!'. I am paralysed and can think of nothing to do but to go on standing there and speaking my lines that don't fit. The only lines I know.

92. speak to me don't mislead me, the calm I feel means a storm is swelling there's no telling where it starts or how it ends

93. How far you are I just don't know The distance I'm willing to go I pick up a stone that I cast to the sky Hoping for some kind of sign

94. How do you know you're right and were wrong? I don't know

95. [He] never claims to know what he doesn't know. When he's unsure, he says so. When he's sure, he's always right

96. How can we ever know what's true? We can't. That's what I figured out a long time ago. So you don't believe in anything? I believe in everything that seems true to me right now. I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe in now turn out to be false later. It helps keep me from being upset

97. He was close to her hour after hour, the smell of her, the touch of her breath on the hairs of his arms or on his ears as she leaned over his shoulder to watch. He thought sometimes he might go insane with desire for her; but he could not think of a way to change what lay between them, and though he thought she liked him well enough now, he still didn't know if their friendship was yet the thing a marriage should be made of. Do you love me? He wanted to ask her, to demand of her. But fearing the answer would be a wan 'I'm sorry, Ivan,' he did not speak

98. I have to trust everyone and yet there's no one I can really be sure of You can be sure of me she looked at him, searching his face. I've known you so little time. The others I knew all my life. The others are my own people. You are a stranger, from a strange time and place. I know what they can do, what they will do. I have no idea of what you are or what is in your hands and heart and mind. And yet when you tell me I can be sure of you, I am sure

99. Either it was too deep for [him], or not deep enough, he couldn't be sure either way

100. Even step - she knew that she didn't really know him, that always there was the chance that someday he would surprise her, that she would turn to face her husband and find a stranger in his place, a stranger who didn't approve of her and didn't want her in his life anymore