The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.

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.

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

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

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.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

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

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

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.

There’s no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

There are many things that I don’t understand.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don’t know the plot. They don’t know their own individual plot… they don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

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

I’m not a fortune-teller.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

Theology is unnecessary.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which is wont to be simple and always consonant to itself.

This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

When God sneezed, I didn’t know what to say.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know.

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.

The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

Well, we can’t say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

Some scientists believe climate change is the cause of unprecedented melting of the North Pole, and that effects these very uncertain weather patterns. I think we should listen to those scientists and experts.

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

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

I want to marry Arline because I love her – which means I want to take care of her. That is all there is to it. I want to take care of her. I am anxious for the responsibilities and uncertainties of taking care of the girl I love.

The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

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

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

It’s hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

People are skeptical of many televangelists, and I’m sensitive to that.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.