Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.
I feel sometimes as the renaissance man must have felt in finding new riches at every point and in the certainty that unexplored areas of knowledge and experience await at every turn.
I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.
Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
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 ignorance.
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made.
It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart.
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined permanently blocked as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.
Mystery is gone to the certainty of technological principles. So the real terror the real aggression against life comes in the form of the pursuit of our technological happiness.
Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.
No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
I'm sad to report that in the past few years ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.
So in my uncertainty I went to graduate school and there it all happened.
Scientific views end in awe and mystery lost at the edge in uncertainty but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.
A perfect storm is in the making: financial uncertainty economic downturn government cuts rising unemployment and a future that looks less clear the more we try to fathom it.
For all of its uncertainty we cannot flee the future.
I don't need the fillers additives excessive amounts of sugars fats salts and other measures taken to taint the natural goodness of real food.
Let's keep the chemists over here and the food over here that's my feeling. What do I know? But that is a big aspect of fast food is their ability to artificially taint the colors and the smells and stuff to stimulate appetite.
Terrorism is a psychological warfare. Terrorists try to manipulate us and change our behavior by creating fear uncertainty and division in society.
What's the subject of life - to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life.