Quotes about uncertainty

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future.

To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next and keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enough.

Only a few of us believe in reality of dreams and actuality of love but we all devote ourselves to that uncertainty and hesitation.

Debate is an attempt to cling to the illusion of control provided by a point of view designed to keep the ego in place dialogue is an attempt to dance with the unknown at the risk of losing what we think we know.

Having all the answers just means you've been asking boring questions.

The trait [Morey] looked for was awareness that they were seeking answers to questions with no certain answers--that they were inherently fallible. "I always ask them, 'Who did you miss?'" he said. Which future superstar had they written off, or which future bust had they fallen in love with? "If they don't give me a good one, I'm like, 'Fuck 'em.

When we change and grow into new versions of ourselves, we have to tolerate a lot of uncertainty.

I didn't know where it would lead. I wanted things to develop naturally.

Nobody knows how things will turn out, that's why they go ahead and play the game...You give it your all and sometimes amazing things happen, but it's hardly ever what you expect.

We spend so much time defending our choice to do this that it becomes hard to show any vulnerability at all. There's only so many times you can handle someone asking about your fall back for when things don't work before you start thinking that maybe the fall back should just be your plan.

Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.

In a world of increasing uncertainty, expect...

Have you ever truly, keenly felt like you don't know who you are? Do you ever do something and think, Who is at the controls? Like some mad pilot has locked you out of the cockpit? I definitely do. I feel a kind of vertigo that makes me shake afterwards. I guess we all feel it when making a difficult-seeming choice, and sometimes you seriously don't know what you want because you don't know who you're supposed to be, or who you want to be. Physics, my first and second families, my philosophy deg

That, of course, depends entirely on who you mean by 'they'. It's a very vague term. Who is or are 'they'? Is there such a thing, are there such persons as 'they'? We don't know. But I can tell you this. If the most popular explanation of 'they' is accepted, then these people work in very close, self-contained cells. They do that for their own security.~Jessop

Uncertainty is one of government recipes.

Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

In today's ambiguous world, character means despotism, tyranny, absolute intolerance. At last it is time to admire a lack of character, inner weakness. Our epoch is that of noble doubts, blessed uncertainty, sacred hypersensitivity, divine wishy-washiness.

The fundamental language of life is change. Life will keep on changing.

If there's one thing that's certain in business, it's uncertainty.

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

So what did you do when death came to your house? We continued in the same way as before. What is that, a failure of the imagination? Are you in denial? This is not wholly true; we continue in the same way as before but in parenthesis. My thinking has switched its grammar. The present continuous is its single operational tense. Uncertainty is our present and our future.

Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible

Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.

We're all stumbling in the dark, and that makes for some pretty interesting collisions.

They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte's indecision in every word she didn't say and every move she didn't make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn't pulling away, either.

There's a thin line between an uncertain 'Yes' and a certain 'No' known as 'lame indecisiveness'.

When the big things in our life start changing, we rely more heavily on small certainties to make us feel secure.

There was no denying the fact that the death of sugarcane was sounding the knell for something else in the country. What can we call it?

No matter what there always seems to be something clouding my existence, nothing is ever clear.

Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spinThe Thread of present Life away to win-What? for ourselves, who know not if we shallBreathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and there it all happened.

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay falsehood by haste and uncertainty.

Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.

Uncertainty is not an indication of poor leadership it underscores the need for leadership.

Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away.

Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

I trust every single person around me, and if I feel even a whiff of uncertainty I won't have that person around me.

The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.

Uncertainty is a very good thing: it's the beginning of an investigation, and the investigation should never end.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.

If you just watch a teenager, you see a lot of uncertainty.

Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.

Whatever her dream was, it rested somewhere in the most vague of directions.

...but the loss of a memory, like the omission of a phrase during reading, rather than making for uncertainty, can lead to a premature certainty.

I always liked the unknown. Ironically I familiarized myself with the uncertainty of life. Life can change in any minute of the day. God can turn anything around in a speck of a moment. I know for a fact that everything changes. Nothing stays the same. This too shall pass.

Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world.

You ask me why I don’t love you, but surely you must believe I am very fond of you and if to desire to possess a person wholly, to admire and honour that person deeply, and to seek to secure that person’s happiness in every way is to “love” then perhaps my affection for you is a kind of love. I will tell you this that your soul seems to me to be the most beautiful and simple soul in the world and it may be because I am so conscious of this when I look at you that my love or affection for you los

Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part when, somewhere inside, I think he knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying uncertainty is wanting something and not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do.

...to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender...

Go somewhere you know nothing about and see what happens.

We cannot know. But sometimes there is kindness, and sometimes there is love.

It's a dark place, not knowing. It's difficult to surrender to. But I guess it's where we live most of the time. I guess it's where we all live, so maybe it doesn't have to be so lonely. Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty.

Embrace the uncertainty; there is either a massive growth or catastrophic destruction for you lying underneath, there comes its joy.

Why do we resist the mystery that change brings? When we get too rigid and inflexible, rigor mortis of the soul sets in. For proof of this, we need look no further than to those who choose to stay in a relationship or job long after the soul, or life force, that originally brought it passion and joy has vacated the premises.

The problem with living forever, of course, is you have to live forever before you know you're immortal...or invincible. Even the gods, in this way, must always remain uncertain. Time trumps immortality just as uncertainty trumps omniscience, for a knower can only ever know what it knows, never what it doesn't. (attrib: F.L. Vanderson)

I barely know how to be with someone when I’m whole. How the hell am I supposed to be with you when I’m so fucking broken?

Maturity means being able to tolerate, on all sorts of planes, uncertainty and not knowing.

Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions? Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

Ideally, the pursuit of truth is said to be at the heart of the intellectual's business, but this credits his business too much and not quite enough. As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas consummation often turns out to be elusive. Truth captured loses its glamour; truths long known and widely believed have a way of turning false with time; easy truths are bore and too many of them become half truths. Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if h

What if you have all the pieces and the puzzle still doesn't fit?

My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.

Whether it is good or evil, whether life in itself is pain or pleasure, whether it is uncertain-that it may perhaps be this is not important-but the unity of the world, the coherence of all events, the embracing of the big and the small from the same stream, from the same law of cause, of becoming and dying.

It’s the uncertainty of being accepted that creates the drama in our lives.

Most argument, and in fact most conflict, has nothing to do with the present. It's always about the past or the future. People can't agree on the details of what has happened or is going to happen. But we rarely know what has happened, and we never know what is going to happen. What is really at dispute is how we will deal with not knowing.

History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.

Faith, is the road that goes straight past the gravel, and cloud-mesh dirt into a mirage, where still you believe to go straight, and when you finally catch up with it, it ends at a lake where you stretch your eyes across, but unable to glimpse the other side- so you jump in and swim, gliding each stroke with tiredness and swallow of water, you reach the end, put a hand out and pull yourself up on concrete, where the same road continues straight into another blue-white blur.

We have minds that are equipped for certainty, linearity and short-term decisions, that must instead make long-term decisions in a non-linear, probabilistic world.

...the ratings agencies' problem was in being unable or uninterested in appreciating the distinction between risk and uncertainty.

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

There is a saying about surgeons, meant as a reproof: "Sometimes wrong; never in doubt." But this seemed to me their strength. Each day surgeons are faced with uncertainties. Information is inadequate; the science is ambiguous; one's knowledge and abilities are never perfect. Even with the simplest operation, it cannot be taken for granted that a patient will come through better off - or even alive. Standing at the table my first time, I wondered how the surgeon knew that he would do this patien

The core predicament of medicine - the thing that makes being a patient so wrenching, being a doctor so difficult, and being a part of society that pays the bills they run up so vexing - is uncertainty. With all that we know nowadays about people and diseases and how to diagnose and treat them, it can be hard to see this, hard to grasp how deeply uncertainty runs. As a doctor, you come to find, however, that the struggle in caring for people is more often with what you do not know than what you

And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth. He stopped dancing and, catching his breath, stared at the ground beneath his feet as though peering into a bottomless hole.

Sounds like a great place to get killed. Hard pass.

He looked around. The room, a few suitcases, some belongings, a handful of well-read books— a man needed few things to live. And it was good not to get used to many things when life was unsettled. Again and again one had to abandon them or they were taken away. One should be ready to leave every day. That was the reason he had lived alone— when one was on the move one should not have anything that could bind one. Nothing that could stir the heart. The adventure— but nothing more.

I feel lost and confused, but happy and certain. I am like a ball of tangled yarn. The parts that are untangled are available, useable; the rest is a mess, useless until it is untied. That mess feels endless and at most times unyielding.

But what now? What am I supposed to do with all these feelings?

A lot of what people did and said when they "predicted" things, Morey now realized, was phony: pretending to know things rather than actually knowing things. There were a great many interesting questions in the world to which the only honest answer was, "It's impossible to know for sure".

It's hard to know what happy is if you're not sure if you've felt it before.

Indeed, wounded loved can make for fierce vengeance. And, from what I know of Anissa, it does seem a bit out of character for her to behave so spitefully, so I'd like to think that she really is just deeply hurt, angry and looking for some way to injure me back...I hope she knows how well she's succeeded.

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

I have to admit that I'm feeling a little anxious these days. We've all been lied to so much. There's just all this uncertainty we're facing...I mean, what if the hokey-pokey ISN'T what it's all about?

If my journey was so easy, I would have missed out on life's invaluable lessons. From misery I learnt to comfort those in tears, from lack I learnt to give to the needy; from uncertainty I learnt to understand others and from my silence I learnt to listen to the voiceless.

You'd think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn't. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke.

What need of prompt or hint when it is open to yourself to discern what needs to be done - and, if you can see your way, to follow it with kind but undeviating intent. If you cannot see the way, hold back and consult your best advisors. if some other factors obstruct this advice, proceed on your present resources, but with cautious deliberations, keeping always to what seems just. Justice is the best aim, as any failure is in fact a failure of justice.A man following reason in all things combine

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.

And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.

The unknown...the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought...The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

When comparing 100 years of experience to 1, there is a way to close the gap. One must simply understand the choices that were taken, the roads that were walked, and that there are no guarantees to an unseen future.

This was the first time I had not just rushed in and followed my instincts, and it wasn't working out. I was beginning to actively regret it.