"Uncertainty" is NOT "I don't know." It is "I can't know." "I am uncertain" does not mean "I could be certain." — Werner Heisenberg
What is true is no more sure than the probable — Greek Proverbs
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them. — Laurence J. Peter
To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous. — Chinese Proverbs
For as long as one has no further point of reference, apart from the position of the maximum, the wavelength thus remains uncertain by an integral factor. — Max von Laue
Short Indeterminate Quotes
Chaos is hateful. That indeterminate nature of war brings a really unsettling atmosphere to life. — Herbert
Like music my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate. — Odilon Redon
For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions. — Reinhold Niebuhr
Indeterminacy Quotes
Faith is not so much a binary pole as a quantum state, which tends to indeterminacy when closely examined. — John Updike
Biology seems to be a chemical strategy for amplifying quantum mechanical indeterminacy so that it leaves the subatomic realm and can be present in a hundred and forty five pound block of meat. — Terence McKenna
Instead, I was interested in what I guess I could call narrative indeterminacy, in questioning the apparent, taken-for-granted authority of any particular representation of the events in question. — Peter Straub
If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability. — Murray Gell-Mann
The message here was not about indeterminacy, nor about immediacy, but about the control of sounds right there in your environment, and the process of composition as long-term growth of interests within that sound complex. — Tony Conrad
But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy. — Murray Gell-Mann
Now, what that means is that there is fundamental indeterminacy from quantum mechanics, but besides that there are other sources of effective indeterminacy. — Murray Gell-Mann
The major producer of the social chaos, the indeterminacy of thought and values that rational knowledge is supposed to eliminate, is none other than science itself. — Robert M. Pirsig
I think that creativity depends on having sufficient indeterminacy around for a new pattern to arise up within it. — Rupert Sheldrake
Indefinite Quotes
Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist — David Attenborough
Women are most fascinating between the ages of 35 and 40 after they have won a few races and know how to pace themselves. Since few women ever pass 40, maximum fascination can continue indefinitely. — Christian Dior
Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future. — Confucius
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one. — James Madison
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. — James Madison
Organized civil disobedience is the correct next response to the prolonged, indefinite and deliberate abuse of exotic emergency powers inconsistent with being a free people in our own country. I don’t want to go there, but it is time. — Eric Weinstein
That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles are less than two right angles. — Euclid
Your political system is actually too democratic. The fact that Americans vote on every bill and proposition can prolong bigotry indefinitely, especially where it is aimed at minority groups. — George Michael
Every so often a disappearance is in order. A vanishing. A checking out. An indeterminate period of unavailability. Each person, each sane person, maintains a refuge, or series of refuges, for this purpose. A place, or places, where they can, figuratively if not literally, suspend their membership in the human race. — John Murray
Friendship is an obstetric art; it draws out our richest and deepest resources; it unfolds the wings of our dreams and hidden indeterminate thoughts; it serves as a check on our judgements, tries out our new ideas, keeps up our ardor, and inflames our enthusiasm. — Antonin Sertillanges
When God picks out a man and speaks to him, it is to engage him in a work, an action. Nowhere in Scripture do we find indeterminate or purely mystical vocation. — Jacques Ellul
You had better be a round peg in a square hole than a square peg in a square hole. The latter is in for life, while the first is only an indeterminate sentence. — Elbert Hubbard
One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless. — Sam Harris
If we were to abandon concern for what is true, what is false, and what remains indeterminate, the world would be totally chaotic. Even those who deny the importance of truth, on the one hand, are quick to jump on anyone who is caught lying. — Howard Gardner
Indeterminism does not confer freedom on us: I would feel that my freedom was impaired if I thought that a quantum mechanical trigger in my brain might cause me to leap into the garden and eat a slug — J. J. C. Smart
I could take a cow and implant a camera in it and let it amble around the city or in its own domain (I say a cow because a human being I would not trust). If the camera was programmed to go off at an indeterminate series of moments, the samplings would be fantastic. — Frederick Sommer
Although it was constructed in 1536, the New York subway system boasts an annual maintenance budget of nearly $8, currently stolen, and it does a remarkable job of getting New Yorkers from Point A to an indeterminate location somewhere in the tunnel leading to point B. — Dave Barry
Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason. — Immanuel Kant
A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, monster incomprehensible, raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man. — Henri Frederic Amiel
Absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i.e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal... — Hans Reichenbach
Butterflies... not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures. — Elizabeth Goudge
Man's consciousness is his least known and most abused vital organ. Most people believe that consciousness as such is some sort of indeterminate faculty which has no nature, no specific identity and therefore no requirements, no needs, no rules for being properly or improperly used.... Men abuse, subvert and starve their consciousness in a manner they would not dream of applying to their hair, toenails or stomachs. They know that these things have a specific identity and specific requirements, and, if one whishes to preserve them, one must comb one's hair, trim one's toenails and refrain from swallowing rat poison. — Ayn Rand
The universe is then one, infinite, immobile. It is not capable of comprehension and therefore is endless and limitless, and to that extent infinite and indeterminable, and consequently immobilizable.. — Giordano Bruno
I believe indeterminate sentencing can be extremely useful, but I also believe that any such system should always take into consideration the special knowledge as to the facts in a case which only the trial judge possesses. — Robert Kennedy
It is precisely through the indeterminate nature of history that resistance becomes possible and politics refuses any guarantees and remains open. — Henry Giroux
Youth no longer inhabit the privileged space, however compromised, that was offered to previous generations. They now occupy a neoliberal notion of temporality of dead time, zones of abandonment and terminal exclusion marked by a loss of faith in progress and a belief in those apocalyptic narratives in which the future appears indeterminate, bleak and insecure. — Henry Giroux
her age was that indeterminate mixture of everlasting youth and anticipated wisdom which is the glory and the curse of genius. — Gertrude Atherton
The purpose of scientific method is to select a single truth from among many hypothetical truths. That, more than anything else, is what science is all about. But historically science has done exactly the opposite. Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple indeterminate, relative ones. — Robert M. Pirsig
I want to support the view that the foundation of reality itself is a unified, indeterminate maze of possibilities. — Danah Zohar
They become liberated spaces that can be occupied. A rich indetermination gives them, by means of a semantic rarefaction, the function of articulating a second, poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal, forbidden or permitted meaning. They insinuate other routes into the functionalist and historical order of movement. Walking follows them: 'I fill this great empty space with a beautiful name.' — Michel De Certeau
The goal of scientific physicians in their own science ... is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still indeterminate. — Sayings
The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form- an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other. — Carl Jung
There is, however, a moral basis for the vegetarian diet for which the indeterminate value of an animal's life takes on irrelevance. And that moral basis is a concern for the environment, a value as absolute as the value we all place on human life, since humanity will not survive for long on a poisoned planet. To be an environmentalist who happens to eat meat is like being a philanthropist who doesn't happen to give to charity. — Howard Lyman
Despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, [the death of a parent] dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and may cut free memories and feelings that we thought had gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections. — Joan Didion
In Conclusion
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