There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.
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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainty that just to be alive is a grand thing.
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There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities-- potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry-- that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.
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Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?
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As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
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Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals. . . must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.
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The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.
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Certainties are arrived at only on foot.
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The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
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The antonyms for dreams are actuality, certainty, existence, fact, reality, substance, and truth.
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Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
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Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
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Bank on a life, saving towards the certainty of change Ledger all the happiness, pencil in to rearrange Withdraw all the worry Deposit all the faith Compound all the experience and Recognize when the payment is late.
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The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
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Positiveness is an absurd foible. If you are in the right, it lessens your triumph; if in the wrong, it adds shame to your defeat.
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We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.
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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.
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Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.
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It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.
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I prefer complexity to certainty, cheerful mysteries to sullen facts.
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The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.
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For a long time then, I reflected on this confusion in the astronomical traditions concerning the derivation of the motions of the universe's spheres. I began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most systematic Artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the philosophers, who otherwise examined so precisely the most insignificant trifles of this world. For this reason I undertook the task of rereading the works of all the philosophers which I could obtain to learn whether anyone had ever proposed other motions of the universe's spheres than those expounded by the teachers of astronomy in the schools. And in fact I found in Cicero that Hicetas supposed the earth to move. Later I also discovered in Plutarch that certain others were of this opinion. . . . Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth.
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It is suggested that, in domestic violence at least, the presence or absence of a firearm, or of any other type of weapon, is of far less importance to the outcome than the passion generated in the attacker. The man who has lost control will cause serious injuries in many cases, quite irrespective of the weapon he uses and regardless of the certainty of detection and punishment.
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I have always felt that the moment when first you wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the 24 hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that ... absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't , matters not one jot. The possibility is always there.
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Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.
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. . . you know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.
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For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
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Isaiah 9:1:
Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan –
(NIV)
BUT [in the midst of judgment there is the promise and the certainty of the Lord's deliverance and] there shall be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time [the Lord] brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time He will make it glorious, by the way of the Sea [of Galilee, the land] beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
(AMP)
Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.
(KJV)
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Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
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A just war is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
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