“The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.”

—  John F. Kennedy

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable." by John F. Kennedy?
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy 469
35th president of the United States of America 1917–1963

Related quotes

Jean Tinguely photo

“Static, static, static! Be static! Be static! Movement is static! Movement is static! Movement is static because it is the only immutable thing - the only certainty, the only unchangeable. The only certainty is that movement is static.”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

Quoted in: Guy Brett, ‎Hayward Gallery, ‎Museu d'Art Contemporani (Barcelona, Spain) (2000) Force fields: phases of the kinetic. p. 250.
Quotes, 1950's, Static static, static !, 1959

Sri Chinmoy photo

“I do not give up, I never give up, for there is nothing in this entire world that is irrevocably unchangeable.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

#233, Part 3
Twenty Seven Thousand Aspiration Plants Part 1-270 (1983)

Nelson Mandela photo

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Pliny the Elder photo

“The only certainty is that nothing is certain.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Fuller version: This series of instances entangles unforeseeing mortality, so that among these things but one thing is in the least certainthat nothing certain exists, and that nothing is more pitiable, or more presnmptuous, than man! In Latin: Quae singula inprovidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista vel certu sit nihil esse certi nec quicquam miserius homine aut superbius.
Book II, sec. 5.
Naturalis Historia

“What makes you so certain?"
"But I am not certain," I told him. "Nothing is certain. You want certainty?"
"Yes!"
"Then you want death.”

Stephen R. Lawhead book The Silver Hand

Source: The Silver Hand

Samuel Beckett photo

“No, life ends and no, there is nothing elsewhere, and no question now of ever finding again that white speck lost in whiteness, to see if they still lie still in the stress of that storm, or of a worse storm, or in the black dark for good, or the great whiteness unchanging, and if not what they are doing.”

Samuel Beckett book Imagination Dead Imagine

Imagination Dead Imagine (1965)

Michael Crichton photo

“I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”

Michael Crichton book State of Fear

State of Fear (2004)

“In every country and every human breast there is a natural desire to find a stable equilibrium — something that does not change. We cannot find it in nature, for all the universe is nothing but an infinite mass of changes. But to infer from that that nothing unchanging exists is to fall into the error of the Southern school of Buddhists and the Chârvâkas, which latter believe that all is matter and nothing mind, that all religion is a cheat, and morality and goodness, useless superstitions.”

Charvaka An unorthodox school of Hindu philosophy

Swami Vivekananda as recorded in the complete works of Swami Vivekananda https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_1/Lectures_And_Discourses/The_Hindu_Religion.

Bertrand Russell photo

“When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Skepticism"
1940s, Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell8.htm (1947)

Yukio Mishima photo

“What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1959).
Context: What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed. You may ask what good it does us. Let's put it this way — human beings possess the weapon of knowledge in order to make life bearable. For animals such things aren't necessary. Animals don't need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the very intolerableness of life a weapon, though at the same time that intolerableness is not reduced in the slightest. That's all there is to it.

Related topics