Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.
I felt like power meant that you had to be engaged in a certain kind of struggle by force of movement and battle - and that's very exhausting. Now, power is more about certainty and stillness and realizing that the infrastructures that we gather around and worship are the least powerful things.
Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
As a businessman, you need economic certainty. On the tax policies. You need it on your regulatory policies.
When we deal with questions relating to principles of law and their applications, we do not suddenly rise into a stratosphere of icy certainty.
If falling into desperation worked to make things better, then I would say, 'Let's all jump into despair.' But it doesn't help. The only way to truly find meaning and fulfillment is to look at the disaster, the pain, the difficulty, and know with complete certainty that good can come from this.
If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.
Your one certainty in life, your power as a human being, is that you have a choice in every situation about what you do next and about how you take what has happened to you.
As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive oneself and accepts this lack of certainty, other things may come into play.
My friends call me a 'pace-setter.' Sometimes I am impatient, I think, but you must be fast and flexible in business because uncertainty is the only certainty in life.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.
The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of hellebore.
Businesses need certainty, to see clearly the rules of engagement for investing in South Africa.
If you want to attract more investment, foreign investment, more talent, more business, I think having some level of certainty that the business environment respects, those who have been your partners for a long time, is important.
If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.
It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.
Ideas which have been developed simultaneously or in immediate succession in the same mind mutually reproduce each other, and do this with greater ease in the direction of the original succession and with a certainty proportional to the frequency with which they were together.
We have lost certainty and predictability in the regulatory and tax climate in America, and this is why we're recovering so slowly.
You should have certainty in what you do. Anyone who has done anything in this world was hated. If you're not hated, you've done nothing.
The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.
The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty.
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; riches take wings; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
We regard it as a certainty that the earth, enclosed between poles, is bounded by a spherical surface.
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
It is to be feared that those who emigrate to New South Wales, generally anticipate too great facility in their future operations and certainty of success in conducting them; but they should recollect that competency cannot be obtained without labour.
Absolute certainty is not something I strive for anymore. I've learned the hard way that destiny usually looks upon our most strident convictions with amusement, or perhaps even pity.
Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?
We have to be mindful that there is the certainty that terrorists will attempt to launch multiple attacks against their enemy, which is us and our allies.
I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen of the sciences because it claimed certainty. It was grounded on some fundamental certainties - axioms - that led to others.
The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of a mass destruction - WMD - were presented with a certainty that was not justified.
People are looking for certainty. The more complex the world becomes, the more people look for people to give them certainty and tell them what to do. During the past few years of actively thinking about this, there is one thing that I have accepted: certainty is not out there. There is not one strategy to follow, and that's OK.