Kenneth Arrow Quotes

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.

Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it.

Intelligence always carries uncertainties. That is the nature of the beast.

Nobody really knows everything, and they can only assume.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

Science is uncertain.

Nobody can see into the future. Nobody knows what going to go on.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

I never look forward, because I have no idea about how any of it happened to getting here. I've no idea how the next five years are going to be.

From an early age I was very, very fascinated by uncertainty.

Man lives in a world of surmise, of mystery, of uncertainties.

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

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!

I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Apprehensions are greater in proportion as things are unknown.

There are no certainties.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

Everything that we start is something that we don't know what the outcome is going to be.

The future is inherently uncertain.

Nobody knows what will happen in the future.

'Belief' means something that you do not know. You want to assume and bring a certainty to something that you do not know. That means you are concretising your ignorance. There is no need to believe anything.