Quotes about uncertainty

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

In this century there’s been much stress placed not upon what we know but on knowing that our methods are themselves questionable—our Song of Songs is the Uncertainty Principle.

I make no vows. I take my chance. ... It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.

It is not so much that there are ironies of history, it is that history itself is ironic. It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties. It is not only true that the test of knowledge is an acute and cultivated awareness of how little one knows (as Socrates knew so well), it is true that the unbounded areas and fields of one’s ignorance are now expanding in such a way, and at such a velocity, as to make the contemplation of them almost fantastically beautiful.

I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day. (Part One, 7th section)

He told himself that, but he was getting less and less persuasive. Not knowing was the worst thing. The second-worst thing as being chased by a bunch of top-of-the-line warships that really wanted to kill you.

There is no certainty but that there is no certainty.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought... Nothing is what we thought.

In fact, anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness.

When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize.

From this point of view, the only time we ever know what’s really going on is when the rug’s been pulled out and we can’t find anywhere to land. We use these situations either to wake ourselves up or to put ourselves to sleep.

You think about all that stuff that can happen to you, he said. There aint no end to it.