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

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It’s like going from nowhere to nowhere.

Success isn’t supposed to happen, no matter how hard you work. There’s no guarantee you’re going to succeed. There’s nothing set in stone.

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

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

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

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

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

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

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

‚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.‘

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a star. I didn’t really know what all that meant. I didn’t know.

The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.

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

A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people’s hope.

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

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

We think that life develops spontaneously on Earth, so it must be possible for life to develop on suitable planets elsewhere in the universe. But we don’t know the probability that a planet develops life.

I don’t have all the answers.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

Why should I be studying for a future that soon may not exist?

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

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

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

The future is called ‚perhaps‘, which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

The first two games for Churchill, I was so jittery that I didn’t know what to do. I was running more but didn’t know what to do. I’ve no bones accepting the fact that I didn’t know what was happening in the game.

An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

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.

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.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

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.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?

I ordered each man to be presented with something, as strings of ten or a dozen glass beads apiece, and thongs of leather, all which they estimated highly; those which came on board I directed should be fed with molasses.

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

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

People have asked me a lot of times, because I didn’t hit a lot, how long a dozen bats would last me. Depending on the weight and model I was using at that time – I would say eight to 10 cookouts.

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.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

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

I’m constantly thinking.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

Nothing in life is promised except death.

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.