Quotes about uncertainty
A collection of quotes on the topic of uncertainty, use, time, timing.
Quotes about uncertainty

“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”

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.

2004, Democratic National Convention speech (July 2004)
Context: In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? I'm not talking about blind optimism here... No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.

“There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.”
Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
Variant: The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Carrey: 'Life Is Too Beautiful': Star Talks About Bouts With Depression And His Spirituality http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/18/60minutes/main656547.shtml 60 Minutes (21 November 2004)

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)

Concepts

Section 1, paragraph 18, lines 6-9.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Christmas message to overseas Filipinos (25 December 1979)
1965

Scientific American (1971), volume 225, page 180.
Explaining why he named his uncertainty function "entropy".

Une seule partie de la physique occupe la vie de plusieurs hommes, et les laisse souvent mourir dans l'incertitude.
"A Madame la Marquise du Châtelet, Avant-Propos," Eléments de Philosophie de Newton (1738)
Citas

Further account of his conversations with Andrew Pit
The History of the Quakers (1762)

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

“One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.”
New England Weather, speech to the New England Society (December 22, 1876)

“He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.”
No. 57 (May 19, 1759)
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.51 p. 4
Religious-based Quotes

“Faith is not a certainty. Faith is the courage to live with uncertainty.”
The Case for God, first broadcast on BBC1, 6 September 2010

Douglass North. (1991). "Institutions." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(1): 97-112; Abstract

‘Demokratie. Der Gott, Der Keiner Ist’ http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe9.html

1940s, Philosophy for Laymen (1946)
Context: The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure. The same sort of assurance is demanded, in later life, of those who undertake to lead populations into the Promised Land. “Liquidate the capitalists and the survivors will enjoy eternal bliss.” “Exterminate the Jews and everyone will be virtuous.” “Kill the Croats and let the Serbs reign.” “Kill the Serbs and let the Croats reign.” These are samples of the slogans that have won wide popular acceptance in our time. Even a modicum of philosophy would make it impossible to accept such bloodthirsty nonsense. But so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.
But if philosophy is to serve a positive purpose, it must not teach mere skepticism, for, while the dogmatist is harmful, the skeptic is useless. Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance.
1990

“The mistake is in thinking there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.”
Variant: The mistake is thinking that there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.
Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“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.


“In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty…”

“There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.”
Reported as attributed to Burns but unverified in Suzy Platt (ed.), Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service (Washington, DC : Library of Congress 1989) http://www.bartleby.com/73/172.html
Disputed
Source: Collected Poems of Robert Burns
Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
“My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.”
Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

“Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still”

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Source: Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents

Source: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 60, note 92

Source: "Institutional Economics," 1931, p. 648

Dantzig (1991) as cited in: " Professor George Dantzig: Linear Programming Founder Turns 80 http://www.stanford.edu/group/SOL/dantzig.html", in: SIAM News, November 1994.

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss

1930s, On my Painting (1938)

'Hair grows the way it wants'
2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)
Preface. p. xi.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. viii.
Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 30

"Discontented Muslim clergy challenge Iran's supreme leader behind scenes" by Bill Meyer in World News at Cleveland.com (8 July 2009) http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2009/07/discontented_muslim_clergy_cha.html

Source: "The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields," 1983, p. 147; abstract
Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 280

Larry Elliott, Will Hutton and Julie Wolf, " Pound drops out of ERM http://politics.guardian.co.uk/euro/story/0,,506405,00.html", The Guardian, 17 September 1992.
Speech outside the Treasury on 'Black Wednesday' (16 September 1992) announcing the ERM withdrawal.

Time and Individuality (1940)

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 32; Cited in: Philip Pilkington, " Gunnar Myrdal’s Prescient Criticisms of Keynes’ General Theory http://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/gunnar-myrdals-prescient-criticisms-of-keynes-general-theory/" Posted on August 10, 2013
Source: Organization design: An information processing view, 1977, p. 21

The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self, 1984
The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Herbert Reade Memorial Lecture (6 February 1990)
Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 13, “The Future of Science: Surprises or Revolutions” (p. 210)

Source: Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic (1995), p. 205 cited in: Flavio Comim, et al. (2008) The Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications. p. 298.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 600.
“Whatever way uncertainty is approached, probability is the only sound way to think about it.”
5. The Rules of Probability. p. 71.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)
Source: An Approach to Cybernetics (1961), p. 18.
Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 8, “Science and Religion: Scientists Just Do Science” (pp. 136-137; minor grammatical errors corrected silently)