Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a term used in subtly different ways in a wide number of fields, including physics, philosophy, statistics, economics, finance, insurance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and information science. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements already made, or to the unknown.

Quotes

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

• If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.
  • Jim Carrey, in "Carrey: 'Life Is Too Beautiful': Star Talks About Bouts With Depression And His Spirituality" 60 Minutes (21 November 2004).

• There's no earthly way of knowing
  Which direction we are going
  There's no knowing where we're rowing
  Or which way the river's flowing
  Is it raining?
  Is it snowing?
  Is a hurricane a-blowing?
  Not a speck of light is showing
  So the danger must be growing
  Are the fires of hell a-glowing?
  Is the grisly reaper mowing?
  Yes, the danger must be growing
  'Cause the rowers keep on rowing
  And they're certainly not showing
  Any signs that they are slowing!
  • Willie Wonka, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl, Pg. 84-85 (1964)

• From that point, my universe went on crumbling; new cracks appeared all the time. I could see that the pleasant securities of childhood, all of those warm little human emotions, all of those trivial aims and purposes that we allow to rule our lives, were an illusion. We were like sheep munching grass, unaware that the butcher's lorry is already on its way. I got used to living with a deep, underlying feeling of uncertainty that no one around me seemed to share. It was rather like living on death row.
  • Colin Wilson in Alien Dawn, pp. 12-13 (1998)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 826.

• Quis scit, an adjiciant hodiernæ crastina summæ
  Tempora di superi?
  • Who knows whether the gods will add to-morrow to the present hour?
  • Horace, Carmina, IV. 7. 17.

• Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo:
  Et subito casu, quæ valuere, ruunt.
  • All human things hang on a slender thread: the strongest fall with a sudden crash.
  • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, IV. 3. 35.

• Nothing is but what is not.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act I, scene 3, line 141.

• This
  I ever held worse than all certitude,
  To know not what the worst ahead might be.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Marino Faliero, Act V.

• Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento huc illuc impellitur.
  • When the mind is in a state of uncertainty the smallest impulse directs it to either side.
  • Terence, Andria, I, 5, 32.