Variant: The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
Algernon, Act I.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Context: I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Algernon, Act I
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 135, “Taglios: The Mad Season” (p. 747)
“Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.”
Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 3
Context: The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”
Variant: Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
Source: Pride and Prejudice
George Saintsbury The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1923) p. 258.
Praise
“Uncertainty is a personal matter; it is not the uncertainty but your uncertainty.”
1. Introduction. p. 1.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)
The Value of Science (1955)
Context: The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 226.
"The Engineering of Consent", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science No. 250 (March 1947), p. 113; Reprinted in Edward L. Bernays, Howard Walden Cutler, The Engineering of Consent, University of Oklahoma Press, 1955
