Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. But I'd like to add a third certainty: trash. And while some in this room might want to discuss reducing taxes I want to talk about reducing trash.

We are biological creatures. We are born we live we die. There is no transcendent purpose to existence. At best we are creatures of reason and by using reason we can cure ourselves of emotional excess. Purged of both hope and fear we find courage in the face of helplessness insignificance and uncertainty.

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty progress change - into crimes.

A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty but to go with it to surf into change.

We have some worse scenarios for which we need to prepare as companies. For the moment we're planning for the worst and the worst is now and the car market is down more than 15 percent in France. There is so much uncertainty.

Without the element of uncertainty the bringing off of even the greatest business triumph would be dull routine and eminently unsatisfying.

Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled not for its own sake but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can do for those who study it.