37 Quotes About Embracing Uncertainty

In a world that often thrives on predictability and control, learning to embrace uncertainty can be a powerful act of courage. Uncertainty is an inevitable part of life, bringing with it both challenges and opportunities. It requires us to let go of rigid plans and open ourselves to the unknown, fostering personal growth and resilience. In this collection, we've gathered 37 poignant quotes that illuminate the beauty of stepping into the uncertain. These words of wisdom offer insights and inspiration, encouraging you to find peace and possibility in the midst of life's unpredictability. Whether you're standing at a crossroads or venturing into new territory, let these quotes be your guiding light as you navigate the ebb and flow of life's journey.

1. “Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)” - Blaise Pascal

2. “I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.” - Richard P. Feynman

3. “Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be.” - Jodi Picoult

4. “And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.” - Jack Kerouac

5. “In these times I don't, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don't want what I know and want what I don't know.” - Marsilio Ficino

6. “The death of God left the angels in a strange position.” - Donald Barthelme

7. “I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.” - Woody Allen

8. “Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.” - Anne Rice

9. “Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.” - Richard Buckminster Fuller

10. “I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.” - Beryl Markham

11. “Risk means 'shit happens' or 'good luck” - Toba Beta

12. “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

13. “Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.” - Amos Tversky

14. “Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.” - Bertrand Russell

15. “In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.” - Alan Moore

16. “Questioning anything within doubt, will just bring mind to no certainty.” - Toba Beta

17. “When in doubt, be ridiculous.” - Sherwood Smith

18. “But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.” - Banana Yoshimoto

19. “In God's eyes, a man who teaches one truth and nothing else is more righteous than a man who teaches a million truths and one lie.” - Criss Jami

20. “If I knew what to doI'd do more than write a song for you” - Criss Jami

21. “But just as we can all agree on what is red, even if we will never know if we each see it in the same way, so we can all agree - can’t we? - that no matter how confident we may appear to others, inside we are all sobbing, scared and uncertain for much of the time. Or perhaps it’s just me.Oh God, perhaps it really is just me.Actually it doesn’t really matter, when you come to think of it. If it is just me, then you are reading the story of some weird freak. You are free to treat this book like science fiction, fantasy or exotic travel literature. Are there really men like Stephen Fry on this planet? Goodness, how alien some people are. And if I am not alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can marvel together at the strangeness of the human condition.” - Stephen Fry

22. “What makes us leave what we love best?What is it inside us that keeps erasing itselfWhen we need it most,That sends us into uncertainty for its own sakeAnd holds us flush there until we begin to love itAnd have to begin again?What is it within our own lives we decline to liveWhenever we find it, making our days unendurable,And nights almost visionless?I still don't know yet, but I do it.” - Charles Wright

23. “It’s the uncertainty of being accepted that creates the drama in our lives.” - Elizabeth Eulberg

24. “One the grand paradoxes of existence and nonexistence is the uncertainty of uncertainty. Even uncertainty can be uncertain. However, can you be certain of such uncertainty?” - Lionel Suggs

25. “Heralds don't sing about men who lived in orthodoxy or played it safe, they sing about men who lived an uncertain future and took enough risks to make your head spin.” - Evan Meekins

26. “In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.” - Robert Fripp

27. “I push against the tree and run away, stumbling, the unreal night playing with me, gravity pulling from below, behind, above, making me fall. And I run through a world that is rotating, conscious of the earth's spin, of our planet twirling as it careens through nothingness, of the stars spiraling above, of the uncertainty of everything, even ground, even sky. Mumtaz never calls out, although a thousand and one voices scream in my mind, sing, whisper, taunt me with madness.” - Mohsin Hamid

28. “Faith, is the road that goes straight past the gravel, and cloud-mesh dirt into a mirage, where still you believe to go straight, and when you finally catch up with it, it ends at a lake where you stretch your eyes across, but unable to glimpse the other side- so you jump in and swim, gliding each stroke with tiredness and swallow of water, you reach the end, put a hand out and pull yourself up on concrete, where the same road continues straight into another blue-white blur.” - Anthony Liccione

29. “Uncertainty is caused by a lack of knowledge. Hesitation is the product of fear.” - Internet Archive

30. “Your future is uncertain, and I can tell you nothing that can help you. You are singular and dangerous, and so it is that you are sought by both the Dark and the Light.” - Alison Croggon

31. “Every judgment teeters on the brink of error,” Leto explained. “To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.” - Frank Herbert

32. “Having all the answers just means you've been asking boring questions.” - Joey Comeau

33. “To try is to invite uncertainty. Where confidence goes, success usually follows.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

34. “He had the feeling that he must make a decision, and though he was used to making many decisions every day, this time he was beset with uncertainty; in fact he had no idea what was being asked of him” - Amos Oz

35. “History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.” - Ian Fleming

36. “For others, as for ourselves, we must trust him. If we could thoroughly understand anything, that would be enough to prove it undivine; and that which is but one step beyond our understanding must be in some of its relations as mysterious as if it were a hundred.” - George MacDonald

37. “When in doubt, throw doubt out and have a little faith....” - E.A. Bucchianeri