Jack Vance Quotes

Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exceptions of this statement and death.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties.

Everything in life is gray, you know.

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

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

My personal philosophy is, you can be sure of nothing.

It is of no help to us that there is an absolute truth of the matter of things because unfortunately, none of us are in a position to say definitively what that is - although we all think that we are.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

If we have as a clear certainty with which to plan, total uncertainty, then that would be helpful.

We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.

Good and Evil are very hard to explain or understand. I'm sure that evil exists, but it is hard to isolate. Good and evil are intertwined and impossible to separate. They are not completely opposites and in fact are often one and the same.

No generalization is wholly true—not even this one.

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature.

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

If all creeds are equally true, then since they are contradictory to one another, they are all equally false, or at least equally uncertain.

Evil to some is always good to others

Everything is true, and nothing is true!

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

You believe by doubting and you doubt by believing; yet this state too is not the final one.

Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them 'has' to be right.

Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.

Moral: It all depends.