#certainty

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#both #certain #certainty #dissipate #dogmatism

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#being #certainty #chief #hesitation #how

The glorious uncertainty of the law was a thing well known and complained of, by all ignorant people, but all learned gentleman considered it as its greatest excellency. ↗

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

#considered #excellency #gentleman #glorious #greatest

We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty. ↗

— Nate Silver

#comfortable #more #must #probability #uncertainty

If you don't think you want to go on a train and read the paper every day and work from nine to six at night, there was something about the uncertainty when I was younger which was very attractive. ↗

— Ron Silver

#attractive #day #every #every day #go

It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose. ↗

— Clifford D. Simak

#certainty #earth #however #life #me

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. ↗

— Adam Smith

#adventure #approach #certain #certainty #greater

Everything at some point has been declared the root of all evil. ↗

— Criss Jami

#bad #beginning #clever #confusion #declaration

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. ↗

— Sherwood Anderson

#future #ghosts #life #manhood #nothingness

I told Ersken, "Lately it's been like living on the knife's edge, never knowing which side I'll fall off on" Ersken clapped me on the shoulder as we stepped into the street. "Cheer up, Beka. Maybe you were going to fall off that razor's edge before, but not today," he said, as good humored as always. "Today we're doing to jump. ↗

— Tamora Pierce

#humor #joke #uncertainty #walking-the-line #humor