#uncertainty

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. ↗

— Nikos Kazantzakis

#human-nature #soul #uncertainty #nature

Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office—the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement—is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#assistance #bupropion #depression #future #happiness

Uncertainty is the worst of all evils until the moment when reality makes us regret uncertainty. ↗

— Alphonse Karr

#makes #moment #reality #regret #uncertainty

I look at decisions like - it's like an Indiana Jones movie. The guy comes to a rope ladder, and he's being chased. There's uncertainty on the other side, but he knows when he gets to the other side, he's going to take his machete and cut the rope ladder behind him. He has no retreat. ↗

— Mark Burnett

#being #chased #comes #cut #decisions

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#before #beings #blocked #confined #continuous

Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing. ↗

— William Congreve

#insipid #joys #life #security #thing

This implies that the laws governing organic cohesion, the organization leading from the part to the whole, represent a biological uncertainty, indeed an uncertainty of the first order. ↗

— Walter Rudolf Hess

#cohesion #first #governing #implies #indeed

But just as we can all agree on what is red, even if we will never know if we each see it in the same way, so we can all agree - can’t we? - that no matter how confident we may appear to others, inside we are all sobbing, scared and uncertain for much of the time. Or perhaps it’s just me. Oh God, perhaps it really is just me. Actually it doesn’t really matter, when you come to think of it. If it is just me, then you are reading the story of some weird freak. You are free to treat this book like science fiction, fantasy or exotic travel literature. Are there really men like Stephen Fry on this planet? Goodness, how alien some people are. And if I am not alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can marvel together at the strangeness of the human condition. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#life #uncertainty #inspirational

When there's uncertainty they always think there's another shoe to fall. There is no other shoe to fall. ↗

— Kenneth Lay

#another #fall #other #shoe #think