It’s a very confusing era that we’re in.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.

Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia.

The last person I have ever criticized is an official. They have a tough job to do. Things are happening so quick.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

I think the depth, what children can handle and what they’re interested in, is much deeper than I think what people assume. I think it’s why sometimes we make things too simple for them.

The complexity of things – the things within things – just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

When in doubt, don’t.

And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

I get impatient with people working on a film that have their head in their hands like it’s the most complicated thing in the world.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

What’s coming will come and we’ll just have to meet it when it does.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like.

I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.

My comedy is different every time I do it. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

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.

Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.

I pay attention to politics and technology.

I’m not a fortune-teller.

If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new ‚solution‘ to society’s ‚problems.‘

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind – this attitude of uncertainty – is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

A wet spot on the floor kind of put a scare in myself, so you never know inside those lines what might happen.

God not only plays dice, but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

For 18 years I have resisted talking about current events. I am not going to start now.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the U.S. government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That’s all to the good.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

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.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Some formulas are too complex and I don’t want anything to do with them.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.