“Uncertainty means that we do not have a complete description of the world which we fully believe to be true.”
Source: 1970s-1980s, The Limits Of Organization (1974), Chapter 2, Organization And Information, p. 34
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Kenneth Arrow 37
American economist 1921–2017Related quotes
“Relativism and the Use of Language,” pp. 123-124.
Language is Sermonic (1970)
Context: If we share to a large extent in the mutuality of spirit which makes meaning possible, we are receptive to true meanings; if we do not, we may accept wrong or perverted ones. And since there is no way of getting outside the human imagination to decide otherwise what a word should mean, we are compelled to realize that the most imaginative users of language are those who are going to have the greatest influence upon vocabulary in the long run.

Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: This is a new land - a land of pretension because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term. (Hear, hear.)

Quoted during statement at "The Society for Risk Analysis Policy Forum: Risk Governance for Key Enabling Technologies". Venice, Italy. March 2, 2017.

Interview on ABC Good Morning America http://web.archive.org/web/20051219090425/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/58191.htm, December 16, 2005.

Speech (12 January 1968) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1968/esp/f120168e.html

The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (1978)