These certainty quotes will inspire you. Certainty is something that is the sure or firm conviction that something is the case.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging certainty quotes, certainty sayings, and certainty proverbs.
Famous Certainty Quotes
- “The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.” ~ Erich Fromm
- “Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security” ~ John Allen Paulos
- “The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.” ~ May Sarton
-
“To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.” ~ Socrates
- “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” ~ Voltaire
- “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “The present is the only reality and the only certainty.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
-
“The more I see the less I know for sure.” ~ John Lennon
- “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.” ~ John Keats
- “Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.” ~ Vaclav Havel
- “It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.” ~ Henri Poincare
-
“A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.” ~ Bret Harte
- “Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.” ~ Richard Stallman , Absolute certainty quotes
- “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” ~ William Butler Yeats
- “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
-
“Inquiry is fatal to certainty.” ~ Will Durant
- “The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.” ~ R. H. Tawney
- “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” ~ Charles Darwin
- “The existence of a first cause of the universe is a necessity of thought … Amid the mysteries which become more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty that we are over in the presence of an Infinite, Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.” ~ Herbert Spencer
-
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.” ~ Stephen Jay Gould
- “Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labors of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “Clearly it is not reason that has failed. What has failed-as it has always failed-is the attempt to achieve certainty, to reach an absolute, to find the course of human events to a final end. It is not reason that has promised to eliminate risk in human undertakings; it is the emotional needs of men.” ~ Allen Wheelis
-
“Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made” ~ Bruce Catton
- “I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.” ~ Andreas Vesalius
- “Just as the spectroscope opened up a new astronomy by enabling the astronomer to determine some of the constituents of which distant stars are composed, so the seismograph, recording the unfelt motion of distant earthquakes, enables us to see into the earth and determine its nature with as great a certainty, up to a certain point, as if we could drive a tunnel through it and take samples of the matter passed through.” ~ Richard Dixon Oldham
- “Facts are certainly the solid and true foundation of all sectors of nature study … Reasoning must never find itself contradicting definite facts; but reasoning must allow us to distinguish, among facts that have been reported, those that we can fully believe, those that are questionable, and those that are false. It will not allow us to lend faith to those that are directly contrary to others whose certainty is known to us; it will not allow us to accept as true those that fly in the face of unquestionable principles.” ~ Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur
-
“Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.” ~ A.C. Grayling
- “While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.” ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
- “I believe any decline would lock in a Fed increase with some certainty.” ~ Bruce Bartlett
- “If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives.” ~ Richard P. Feynman
-
“I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could – with 100 percent certainty – know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.” ~ Hans Blix
- “We see it [the as-yet-unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.” ~ William Herschel
- “If it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a man’s character as shown both in inner and in outer actions, that every, even the least, incentive to these actions and all external occasions which affect them were so known to us that his future conduct could be predicted with as great a certainty as the occurrence of a solar or lunar eclipse, we could nevertheless still assert that the man is free.” ~ Immanuel Kant
- “Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.” ~ Honore de Balzac
-
“What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.” ~ Honore de Balzac
- “In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.” ~ Robert James Waller
- “For any culture which is primarily concerned with meaning, the study of death – the only certainty that life holds for us – must be central, for an understanding of death is the key to liberation in life.” ~ Stanislav Grof , Death certainty quotes
- “Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.” ~ Henri Poincare
-
“A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.” ~ Jonathan Swift
- “I then began to study arithmetical questions without any great apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the least connexion with my previous researches. Disgusted at my want of success, I went away to spend a few days at the seaside and thought of entirely different things. One day, as I was walking on the cliff, the idea came to me, again with the same characteristics of conciseness, suddenness, and immediate certainty, that arithmetical transformations of indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry.” ~ Henri Poincare
- “It is the dull man who is always sure and the sure man who is always dull.” ~ H. L. Mencken
- “The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.” ~ Rem Koolhaas
-
“In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “Moral certainty, clear standards, and a commitment to spiritual ideals will set you apart in a world that searches for meaning.” ~ Mitt Romney
- “We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.” ~ Eric Hoffer
- “…while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.” ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
-
“It is said to await certainty is to await eternity.” ~ Jonas Salk
- “There is no certainty; there is only adventure.” ~ Roberto Assagioli
- “A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.” ~ Rudyard Kipling
- “When we are not sure, we are alive.” ~ Graham Greene
-
“Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty, and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?” ~ Garrett Hardin
- “Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.” ~ Dylan Thomas
- “The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. It has not been accepted, because we’ve been in an anthropocentric era.” ~ Story Musgrave
- “It is to be feared that those who emigrate to New South Wales, generally anticipate too great facility in their future operations and certainty of success in conducting them; but they should recollect that competency cannot be obtained without labor.” ~ Charles Sturt
-
“Certainties are arrived at only on foot.” ~ Antonio Porchia
- “We delight in one knowable thing, which comprehends all that is knowable; in one apprehensible, which draws together all that can be apprehended; in a single being that includes all, above all in the one which is itself the all.” ~ Giordano Bruno
- “That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry.” ~ Joseph Glanvill
- “A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility, and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure, and hope.” ~ Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
-
“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
- “If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.” ~ Tony Robbins
- “There are very few certainties that touch us all in this mortal experience, but one of the absolutes is that we will experience hardship and stress at some point.” ~ James Dobson
-
“He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “I feel, sometimes, as the renaissance man must have felt in finding new riches at every point and in the certainty that unexplored areas of knowledge and experience await at every turn.” ~ Polykarp Kusch
- “Step by step a powerful and enterprising race has driven them back from the Atlantic to the West until at last there is scarcely a spot of ground upon which the Indians have any certainty of maintaining a permanent abode.” ~ Nelson A. Miles
