“Be confident, not certain”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Be confident, not certain" by Eleanor Roosevelt?

Eleanor Roosevelt 148

American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady… 1884–1962

Related quotes

“To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006) http://books.google.ca/books?id=gJ1rDj2nR3EC&pg=PA70&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false, edited by Tom Head, p. 70
Context: Those who raise questions about the God hypothesis and the soul hypothesis are by no means all atheists. An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

“Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? and is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Source: Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/lsadm10.txt (1873), Ch. II, A General View of Lombard Street

“And, having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

Source: How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day (1910), Chapter 12.

“Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part XV - General corollary
The Natural History of Religion (1757)
Context: Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them. The greatest and truest zeal gives us no security against hypocrisy: The most open impiety is attended with a secret dread and compunction. No theological absurdities so glaring that they have not, sometimes, been embraced by men of the greatest and most cultivated understanding. No religious precepts so rigorous that they have not been adopted by the most voluptuous and most abandoned of men.