Isaac Watts Quotes

No mortal man, moreover is wise at all moments.

I'm never absolutely sure of anything, and I don't want to be. You're either right and you'll pull through, or you're not. We're never going to be right about everything, and we've certainly been wrong.

I believe it is impossible to be sure of anything.

We are none of us infallible not even the youngest of us.

I can't predict the future.

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

Nobody really knows everything, and they can only assume.

We don't claim to be infallible. I don't claim to be giving you truths from on high.

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.

We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong.

When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything?

Vast ills have followed a belief in certainty.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

It is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain.

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

The other guys are selling certainty. Not me. I'm on the corner with doubt.

But it there's anything I've learned in the past few months, it's that the only thing that's certain in life is that nothing in life is certain.

Even a genius has his questions.

There was no way to know that certainty would one day become a luxury, too.

Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt.

It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.

Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.

Faith, to be faith, must center around something that is not known. Faith, to be faith, must go beyond that for which there is confirming evidence. Faith, to be faith, must go into the unknown. Faith, to be faith, must walk to the edge of the light, and then a few steps into the darkness. If everything has to be known, if everything has to be explained, if everything has to be certified, then there is no need for faith. Indeed, there is no room for it.

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.