Robert Jordan Quotes

There's always the risk that there are unknown unknowns.

'Gonzo' means taking an unknown thing to an unknown place for a known purpose. But sometimes we're lost in an unknown place for no known purpose.

If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.

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

Ambiguity is our permanent state, isn't it? We don't like it being so. Most of us crave order and routine, and yet yawning before us is our future, as frightening as it is thrilling.

The only safety is in the middle of total misunderstanding and deception.

There's so much to explore! And personally, I don't know. It's such a crapshoot.

It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure.

She tilted her head, considering the sensation. "It is strange." He gave a hiss of laughter at the words. "It only gets stranger, darling. But we shall try for something more.

Cracks especially. You have to be careful of the cracks.. Sometimes they are disguised as something else. A doorway, or a smile or even a winking eye. And if you fall through them, you never know were you will end up.

Adventures are only interesting once you've lived to see the end of them. Before that, they are nothing but fear, and being too cold or too hot or too wet or too hungry, and getting hurt.

All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.

War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.

Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how... The artists never entirely knows.

Think you've seen it all? Think again. Outside those doors, we might see anything. We could find new worlds, terrifying monsters, impossible things. And if you come with me... nothing will ever be the same again!

We are in a position similar to that of a mountaineer who is wandering over uncharted spaces, and never knows whether behind the peak which he sees in front of him and which he tries to scale there may not be another peak still beyond and higher up.

We travel because we do not know. We know that we do not know the best before we start. That is why we start. But we forget that we do not know the worst either. That is why we come back.

That's the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

A reasonable probability is the only certainty.

Don't do what you can do - try what you can't do.

If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing.

The general unreliability of all information presents a special problem in war: all action takes place, so to speak, in the twilight, which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. Whatever is hidden from full view in this feeble light has to be guessed at by talent, or simply left to chance. So once again for the lack of objective knowledge, one has to trust to talent or to luck.

Research is a way of taking calculated risks to bring about incalculable consequences.

Discovery requires courage and acceptance that we are not in control, and that the future is uncertain.

William James once said: "Progress is a terrible thing." It is more than that: it is also a highly ambiguous notion. For who knowsbut that a little further on the way a bridge may not have collapsed or a crevice split the earth?