Certitude Quotes

Most of the ugly wars in history have been wars of religion. And there's nothing more dangerous than someone with religious certitude who creates consequences in the world that to me are simply inexcusable.

Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.

Public decision-making does not lend itself to certitude.

Economists are about as useful as astrologers in predicting the future (and, like astrologers, they never let failure on one occasion diminish certitude on the next).

I have concluded the evident existence of God, and that my existence depends entirely on God in all the moments of my life, that I do not think that the human spirit may know anything with greater evidence and certitude.

I can say with unwavering certitude that I have never started a pint of Ben 'n Jerry's ice cream that I didn't finish in its entirety within 6 minutes.

The role of the educator is one of tranquil possession of certitude in regard to the teaching of not only contents but also of 'correct thinking.'

It's one of the greatest comforts of working in ministry: the unspoken certitude that your spouse did not marry you for your money.

I can't say with certitude.

Having the certitude of a succession of days... equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me.

Courage consists, however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquilly and hypocritically in false refuges. Values, morals, homelands, religions, and these private certitudes that our vanity and our complacency bestow generously on us, have many deceptive sojourns as the world arranges for those who think they are standing straight and at ease, among stable things

Faith comes to intelligence as a light that overflows it with joy and inspires it with a certitude that does away with question.

It is certain because it is possible.

The neglected legacy of the Sixties is just this: unabashed moral certitude, and the purity -- the incredibly outgoing energy -- of righteous rage.

Certitude drives people mad.

In music everything is prolonged, everything is edified, and when the enchantment has ceased, we are still bathed in its clarity; solitude is accompanied by a new hope between pity for ourselves - which makes us more indulgent and more understanding - and the certitude of finding something again, that which lives for ever in music.

Faith is certitude without proofs ... Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.

Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.

The greatest threat to civility - and ultimately civilization - is an excess of certitude. The world is much menaced just now by people who think that the world and their duties in it are clear and simple. They are certain that they know what - who - created the universe and what this creator wants them to do to make our little speck in the universe perfect, even if extreme measures - even violence - are required.

From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.

We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.

Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work -- hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss -- loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.

Mature psychological health cannot exist unless we are capable of doubting any form of conceptual certitude about ourselves or anything else.

Securities, certitudes and peace do not lead to discoveries.

The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth

We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we create

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom. Only the person who risks is truly free.

A desire for truth is by no means a need for certitude and it would be unwise to confuse one with the other.

It is not doubt,is certitude that drives you mad.

Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude.

On the other hand, for the whole human being who wills, feels, and represents, external reality is given simultaneously and with as much certitude as his own self.

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.

Certitude is not the test of certainty.

We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

A mystic doesn’t say “I believe.” They say “I know.” A true mystic will ironically speak with that self-confidence but at the same time with a kind of humility. So when you see that combination of calm self-confidence, certitude, and humility all at the same time you have the basis for mysticism in general.

The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude

[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'

Faith is not a question of basking in the certainty that there is a God and that God is taking care of us. Many of us are never granted this kind of assurance. Certitude is not the real substance of faith. Faith is a way of seeing things.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

Certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideoologues, dogmatists, and bullies--people who think that their rigtness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to suscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them!

To commit herself to becoming "an apostle of Joy" when humanly speaking she might have felt at the brink of despair, was heroic indeed. She could do so because her joy was rooted in the certitude of the ultimate goodness of God's loving plan for her. And though her faith in this truth did not touch her soul with consolation, she ventured to meet the challenges of life with a smile. Her one lever was her blind trust in God.

Idiot. Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business. A moment later the couple went off -- he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter -- their first and last encounter -- with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

...the reason for [this age's] anxiety and unrest is because in one direction, 'truth' increases in scope and quantity - via science and technology - while in the other, certainty and confidence steadily decline. Our age is a master in developing truths while being wholly indifferent to certitude. It lacks confidence in the good.

The Bible is not considered an accurate, absolute, authoritative, or authoritarian source but a book to be experienced and one experience can be as valid as any other can. Experience, dialogue, feelings, and conversations are equated with Scripture while certitude, authority, and doctrine are to be eschewed! No doctrines are to be absolute and truth or doctrine must be considered only with personal experiences, traditions, historical leaders, etc. The Bible is not an answer book.

We [tend to] have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We [often feel that we] cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its root in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate.