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A collection of uncertainty quotes, which distills philosophical wisdom on life, fear, faith, and the quiet peace of embracing mystery.
If there’s one lesson life has gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) taught me, it’s this: nothing is guaranteed.
We are creatures who crave a map, a solid five-year plan, a blueprint that promises “if you do A and B, you will get C.” Yet, the thing is, life is a master of disruption.
A career path we’ve been building for a decade suddenly feels empty.
A relationship we thought was our foundation transforms into something we no longer recognize.
A plan we held onto with a white-knuckled grip evaporates in an instant.
I remember standing at a crossroads a few years ago. One path – to continue my full-time job – was “safe”; it made sense on paper; it was what everyone expected. The other path – to give it up and pursue my own passions (as I am doing right now) was illogical, unproven, and frankly, terrifying.
There was no “right” answer, no way to see the full picture. Choosing felt less like a logical decision and more like “tossing a dice,” hoping that I would either land somewhere new or (as one of the quotes in this list says) learn to “fly”.
This is the reality of our human experience, isn’t it? We are constantly called to act without the full script. We have to choose, to move, to be, all while floating in the fog of the “not knowing.”
This space of uncertainty is where our deepest anxieties live. But I’ve also learned it’s where our greatest growth, wisdom, and peace are waiting to be found.
It’s not a void to be feared, but a space to be with.
If you’re in that foggy place right now, please know you are not alone. For centuries, the wisest minds – philosophers, poets, saints, and storytellers – have wrestled with the same feeling. They’ve left us breadcrumbs.
Here is a collection of uncertainty quotes that I have curated – in the hope that it will serve as a guide, a comforting hand, and a source of strength for you.
Highlights
- The following quotes examines the multifaceted nature of uncertainty, including its relationship with fear and hope, faith/ doubt, love, death, change, and more.
- These wise words from philosophers, spiritual guides, and storytellers are presented as a source of comfort, a tool for reframing your own path and treading it with intention.
Short Uncertainty Quotes
The only thing certain in life is uncertainty.
Derek Hough
The one rule of the game of life is that the rules are always changing. Finding peace with this paradox is the first, and most important, step.
All things are subject to fate.
Vietnamese Proverb
We can plan, strive, and fight, but we are still part of a larger flow. Surrendering to that flow isn’t giving up; it’s a form of wisdom.
For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future.
Barbara Jordan
We can’t hit ‘pause’ or ‘rewind’. The future demands our participation, whether we feel ready for it or not.
All life is an experiment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This frees us from seeing any “failure” as final. It’s all just data-gathering, all part of the beautiful, messy process of living.
Amor fati. (Love your fate)
Friedrich Nietzsche
What if every single obstacle was, in fact, the path itself, placed there just for you?
Short uncertainty quotes about life
Inspirational Life Uncertainty Quotes
The quality of your life is directly related to how much uncertainty you can comfortably handle.
Tony Robbins
It’s a muscle. The more ambiguity one can hold without panicking, the wider one’s world becomes.
In times of uncertainty, your habits can ground you.
James Clear
When the world outside is chaos, the small rituals we control become our anchors. A morning coffee, a short walk – these are the foundations of resilience.
Life is short. Life is uncertain. But we know that we have today. And we have each other. I believe that for each of us, there is a place on the frontlines.
Eric Greitens
Knowing it’s all temporary makes the now incredibly precious. It clarifies what truly matters: this day, these people.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Comfort reveals nothing about us. Character is forged in the storm, when standing up is hard and the outcome is completely unknown.
Quotes about leading through uncertainty
Do everything in your human power, and then wait for the decree of heaven.
Japanese Proverb
Focus on the effort, not the outcome. Plant the seeds diligently, then let go and allow the rain to do its part.
Sometimes, the train you took by mistake takes you to your destination.
Japanese Proverb
A ‘wrong’ turn isn’t always wrong. In fact, it might be a beautiful, unplanned detour to a place we didn’t even know we needed to be.
It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
Paulo Coelho, ‘The Alchemist’
If a dream were guaranteed, it would lose all its magic. The chance that it might happen, against the odds, is what fuels the entire journey.
Life is full of surprises. When your day is wonderful, cherish it. When it becomes difficult, stay strong. There are no guarantees on how many days you have left, so be grateful for each and every one of them.
Roger Lee
A call for gratitude in all seasons. The good days are gifts to be savored, and the hard days are lessons in our own strength.
Positive quotes about uncertainty
If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
Eleanor Roosevelt
We say we crave certainty, but we’d be bored to tears by it. The spice of life, the very thing that makes it flavorful, is the not-knowing.
This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.
Hannah Arendt
A truly practical mindset for an abundant existence. Be a realist in preparation, but an optimist in attitude.
Read more: 45 Inner Peace Quotes for Tranquility & Harmony
Quotes on uncertainty of life
Quotes About Certainty and Uncertainty
Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
To claim 100% certainty is to close the mind. Embracing doubt isn’t weakness; it’s the only way to keep learning.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A lie is fragile, but a conviction – a belief held with absolute, unmovable certainty – is likely to blind a person to the truth indefinitely.
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.
Albert Camus
The comfort of certainty is a warm blanket that, many times, become a cage. Seeking truth means being willing to be cold and exposed for a while.
Uncertainty motivational quotes
Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.
Tony Schwartz
This is the paradox of growth. You can’t become who you’re meant to be if you’re clinging too tightly to who you’ve always been.
Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.
Robert Harris, ‘Conclave’
When we’re convinced we have the only answer, we stop seeing other people as partners and start viewing them as obstacles to be overcome.
Those who begin with certainty end up in uncertainty. Those who begin with uncertainty, questioning, asking, doubting, probing, those end up with absolute certainty, not relative certainty.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Starting with doubt is an honest path. On the other hand, starting with “answers” is typically just a defense against fear, one that crumbles under real pressure.
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
Erich Fromm
If we spend all our energy just trying to be safe, we will never use that energy to do or become anything meaningful.
The desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath.
Alan Watts
The very act of grasping for security is a sign of insecurity. When you stop grasping, the panic subsides.
Read more: 50 Essential Emotional Intelligence Quotes
Famous quote about uncertainty
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
Indeed. True wisdom breeds humility, while ignorance breeds a loud, unearned confidence.
Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.
Richard Rohr, ‘Falling Upward’
An authentic spiritual life isn’t about finding a fixed answer, but about continually engaging with the mystery.
Fear of Uncertainty Quotes
Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.
Kahlil Gibran
The future itself isn’t the problem; the compulsion to control it is. The anxiety lives in the gap between our desire for control and the reality of our limited power.
We are willing to pay the price when there’s a high probability that our efforts will achieve success, far less eager when the probability is low. We want certainty that our effort and sacrifice will not be in vain. We are terrorized by the prospect of putting everything we have into achieving a goal and ending up with nothing to show for it. Total commitment shouldn’t be a futile gesture, we think. It’s not fair. So we avoid paying that price. No commitment, no futility.
Marshall Goldsmith, ‘The Earned Life’
Most of us are terrified of “wasted” effort. But what if the effort is the reward, regardless of the outcome?
Fear is often our immediate response to uncertainty. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing fear. They key is not to get stuck in it.
Gabrielle Bernstein
The fear is just a signal – something completely humane. Just acknowledge it, thank it for trying to “protect” you, and then move forward.
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare
How many good things have we missed, not because we failed, but because we were too afraid to even try?
What is fear? Non acceptance of uncertainty. If we accept that uncertainty, it becomes adventure!
Rumi
The only thing that separates a terrifying ordeal from a thrilling adventure is one’s mindset.
Good quotes about uncertainty
Constantly bound by craving and fear to a future full of uncertainties, we strip each present moment of its calm, its intrinsic import, which we are unable to enjoy.
Hannah Arendt
By obsessing over a future that isn’t here, we rob the present moment – the only one we actually have – of its peace.
All of us are insecure; there is nothing secure. When you live in that state of complete inward uncertainty, you will meet every problem of life, any crisis, any challenge, at any level, with clarity and swiftness.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Stop trying to find solid ground; there is none. The real skill is learning to swim in the open water.
A mind that is truly uncertain has no fear. It is only the mind that is afraid, that follows, that demands authority.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Fear comes from the assumption that one already knows what “should” happen. A truly open mind, one that admits “I don’t know,” has no fixed position to be afraid for.
The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow. The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.
Susan Jeffers
The goal isn’t to stop feeling fear. It is to do the thing anyway, and let the fear ride along in the passenger seat.
Read more: 50 Facing Fears Quotes – Unleash the Power Within
Quotes about fear and uncertainty
Deep Uncertainty Quotes
All I know is that I know nothing.
Socrates
Rather than a statement of ignorance, this is the foundation of all wisdom. It’s the admission that opens the door to genuine learning.
The problem with making decisions is that we are often making them under conditions of uncertainty.
Daniel J. Levitin
We’re all just making our best guess with the information we have. Perfection is impossible, so we must aim for “good enough” and have compassion for ourselves.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
Ursula K. Le Guin
What a paradox! The fact that anything could happen next is precisely what makes getting out of bed worthwhile.
Beautiful uncertainty quotes
Doubts are the innermost corner of our souls. One must not talk about his doubts, whatever they be.
Albert Camus
Doubts are private, almost sacred spaces. They are not weaknesses, but signs of a mind that is alive and grappling with reality.
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
Simone de Beauvoir
A very human cry. We are finite beings who are cursed (or blessed) with a longing for the infinite.
The calamities that are constantly being reported – battles, massacres, famines, revolutions – tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied.
George Orwell, ‘Notes on Nationalism’
A prescient look at information overload. When we’re flooded with “facts” and “interpretations,” true certainty becomes a luxury, and belief becomes dangerously unmoored from reality.
I don’t know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don’t understand are at work.
Harold Kushner
Sometimes, there is no grand “reason” for tragedy; there is only the event itself and our response to it.
Laws of nature do not make exceptions for nice people. A bullet has no conscience; neither does a malignant tumor or an automobile gone out of control. That is why good people get sick and get hurt as much as anyone.
Harold Kushner
The universe is impartial. This isn’t cruel; it’s just neutral. It’s a reminder to find our strength in each other, not in appeals for cosmic “fairness”.
Nihilism & Uncertainty Quotes
Absurdity of absurdities.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The cry of a person looking for meaning in a world that seems to offer none. It’s the starting point of a deeper, more desperate search.
You know one thing about chaos? It’s fair!
Joker, ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
A dark perspective, but a compelling one. Chaos, unlike human systems, plays no favorites. Our job is to accept it – and figure out a way forward on our own.
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
Jean-Paul Sartre
There’s no script to follow, no one to blame. That total freedom is both terrifying and the absolute source of all our responsibility.
The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.
Albert Camus
Accepting that life has no inherent meaning is not a dead end. It’s a liberation, freeing us to come up with one through our choices and passions.
I am uncertain of the future, but have achieved total liberty toward my past and toward myself. Here lies my poverty, and my sole wealth.
Albert Camus
When you let go of the past and stop trying to control the future, you become totally free in the present moment.
Read more: 100 Existential Quotes – Rethink One’s Place in the Universe
Quotes about accepting uncertainty
Quotes about the Unknown
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Martin Buber
Many of us set out to achieve a goal. And yet, it is the person we become along the way that is the real destination.
In order to arrive at what I cannot understand, I must go by the way I cannot understand.
Thomas Merton
A mystical truth. You can’t think your way to a new state of being; you have to walk the path, even in darkness.
Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
Oscar Wilde
If we knew how the magic trick worked, it would no longer be magic. The mystery is what makes life beautiful.
Quotes about living with uncertainty
It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.
J. K. Rowling
We project our fears onto a blank screen. What we are afraid of is not the thing itself, but the not knowing.
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Don’t be frustrated by your own complexity. The work of understanding yourself is the noblest life-long project you can undertake.
Read more: 155 Quotes About Identity & Self – Mirrors of the Soul
A mystery is a problem that encroaches upon itself because the questioner becomes the object of the question. Getting to Mars is a problem. Falling in love is a mystery.
Gabriel Marcel
To sum it up, a problem is something to be solved and left behind. A mystery is something to be lived in and experienced – continuously, in every moment.
People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.
Paulo Coelho, ‘The Alchemist’
Indeed. Fear dissolves when you trust in your own ability to adapt and learn, no matter what comes.
Read more: 55 Self-discovery Quotes – Know Thyself
Embracing the Uncertainty Quotes
The past is dead. The future is uncertain; the present is all you have. So eat, drink, and live merrily.
Albert Einstein
All we have is this moment, so embrace it wholly!
Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
A perfect way to describe the messy, exciting, unpredictable nature of being alive!
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
Alfred Adler
From the founder of Adlerian psychology. Don’t get stuck in analysis or talk; action is what creates change and reveals the path.
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas Merton
Stop waiting for the full map. Just focus on the next step in front of you – right here, right now!
Best quotes about uncertainty
Take a leap of faith. You will either land somewhere new or learn to fly.
Kandyse McClure
The outcome is always one of two good things: you either land on solid ground, or you discover you have wings!
Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. You should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.
Alfred Adler
Another core Adlerian concept. Don’t expect others to be kind or brave. Be the one to extend trust first. Just like how Gandhi said ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’!
Will my first step change the world? Maybe it will change, and maybe it will not. But one does not need to think now about what the results will be, or anything like that. What you can do is have confidence in the people closest to you. That is all.
Ichiro Kishimi, ‘The Courage to Be Happy’
The goal isn’t to change the world, but to take your step and trust your neighbor. The rest follows from there.
Quotes about dealing with uncertainty
To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.
Søren Kierkegaard
An existential choice. To avoid all risk is to lose everything. To be yourself, you must be willing to leap.
Aimlessness does not mean doing nothing. It means not putting something in front of you to chase after.
Thich Nhat Hanh
It means not being obsessed with a future goal. Be present, walk without being pre-occupied with any particular “destination,” and simply enjoy the experience!
When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change.
Eckhart Tolle
When you stop seeing uncertainty as a threat, it reveals itself as the doorway to your full potential.
Quotes about Uncertainty and Opportunity
The future is uncertain… but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity.
Ilya Prigogine
If the future were fixed, there would be nothing to create. The entire space for human art, innovation, and choice exists only in the gap of the unknown.
Uncertainty is where things happen. It is where the opportunities – for success, for happiness, for really living – are waiting.
Oliver Burkeman
The “not knowing” is the fertile ground, the open space where life will actually surprise you.
Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible.
Mandy Hale
The in-between, the “not yet,” is not a void; it’s a process of becoming.
Read more: 100 Happy Life Quotes to Illuminate the Day & Warm the Soul
Finding Hope in Uncertain Times Quotes
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
J. K. Rowling
Hope isn’t the absence of darkness; it’s the act of finding a light, however small, within it.
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Acknowledge the setbacks; they are real and they do hurt. But never let them extinguish the “inner fire” that fuels the movement.
That even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination might well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given to them.
Hannah Arendt, ‘Men in Dark Times’
Hope isn’t a grand theory. It’s the small, brave lights of ordinary people living and working with integrity.
Hope is essentially the availability of a soul which has entered intimately enough into the experience of communion to accomplish in the teeth of will and knowledge the transcendent act.
Gabriel Marcel
Hope is not passive wishing. It’s an active, transcendent state of being, born from a deep connection to life – to the Ultimate Reality itself.
The plant is blind but it knows enough to keep pushing upwards towards the light, and it will continue to do this in the face of endless discouragements.
George Orwell
Life is wired to seek the light, instinctively, even without a guarantee of finding it. How about us then?
Read more: 57 Hope Quotes to Uplift Spirits & Brighten the Day
Quotes about Uncertainty in Love & Relationships
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
Ernest Hemingway
Trust is a risk, always. You can’t wait for proof; you must offer trust first to create the conditions for it to be returned.
He who does not trust enough, will not be trusted.
Lao Tzu
The energy you put out is the energy you receive. If you approach others with suspicion, you will only receive suspicion in return.
When we speak of trust, we are referring to something that comes with set conditions. By contrast, the basis of interpersonal relations is not founded on trust but on confidence. It is doing without any set conditions whatsoever when believing in others. Even if one does not have sufficient objective grounds for trusting someone, one believes. One believes unconditionally without concerning oneself with such things as security. That is confidence. It is precisely because we lay a foundation of unconditional confidence that it is possible for us to build a deep relationship.
Ichiro Kishimi, ‘The Courage to Be Disliked’
A crucial distinction. Trust is conditional (“I’ll trust you if…”). Confidence, on the other hand, is unconditional (“I choose to believe in you, period”).
Uncertainty in a relationship quotes
In what way can I get someone to receive and listen deeply to my words? I cannot force them and say, ‘Believe in me.’ That person is free to believe or not to believe. The only thing I can do is believe in the other party to whom I am speaking. That is all. I want you to believe in me. So, I will believe in you first, even if you yourself are trying not to believe.
Ichiro Kishimi, ‘The Courage to Be Happy’
You cannot decide how others feel or react. The only thing you can control is your own choice to have faith in them.
To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
Erich Fromm
Love, at its finest state, is not a transaction; it’s a leap of faith. It’s giving your all without a warranty.
Read more: 84 Unconditional Love Quotes for Every Soul
Uncertainty love quotes
The World is Not Black and White Quotes
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche
If we truly think about it, it should become clear that many of our own “obvious” truths are actually filtered through our own perspective.
No two beings, and no two situations, are really commensurable with each other. To become aware of this fact is to undergo a sort of crisis. But it is with this crisis in our moral awareness as a starting-point, that there becomes possible that cry from us towards the creative principle, and that demand by it on us, which each must answer in his own way.
Gabriel Marcel
You can’t apply a simple, universal rulebook to complex, unique human lives. True morality requires seeing the specific person and situation. Always.
Morality resides in the painfulness of an indefinite questioning.
Simone de Beauvoir, ‘The Ethics of Ambiguity’
A very existentialist ethic. The moment you have a simple, easy answer, you’ve probably stopped being ethical.
Everything is uncertain quotes
We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
Amy Tan
As a storyteller, she knows. The messy, gray areas are where the most interesting and human truths are found.
There is no such thing in the world as absolute evil or absolute good. There is good to be found within evil, and plenty of evil to be found within the good.
Shusaku Endo
A difficult, yet profound idea from the author of Silence. Life is a complex mixture, and judging too quickly blinds us.
The world isn’t always black and white. Sometimes, it’s gray, and sometimes that gray explodes into colors you never knew existed before.
J. M. Darhower
The “gray” isn’t dull; it’s the precursor to a much richer, more vibrant understanding of life.
Stoic Quotes on Uncertainty
You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
Marcus Aurelius
The core principle of Stoicism. You don’t have power over the storm, but you can always control the ship.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
Marcus Aurelius
Don’t be virtuous out of fear of punishment or hope for reward. Do it for its own sake, because that is the only thing you truly control.
What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
Seneca, ‘On the Shortness of Life’
Stop sacrificing today for a tomorrow that may never come. Your life is happening now.
Uncertainty quotes and sayings
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what is in Fortune’s control and abandoning what lies in yours.
Seneca, ‘On the Shortness of Life’
By living in a constant state of “waiting” – for the weekend, for a promotion, for things to get better – we essentially let the present slip through our fingers.
When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?
Epictetus
Anxiety is almost always a sign that we’ve tied our peace to something not within our influence.
Don’t demand or expect that events happen as you would wish them do. Accept events as they actually happen. That way, peace is possible.
Epictetus
Accept reality as it is, not as you wish it were. This is the path to peace.
Read more: 105 Stoic Quotes for a Virtuous & Fulfilling Life
Quotes about Uncertainty and Change
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
Alan Watts
Don’t resist the flow. Learn to move with it.
Carrying out change is ‘death itself’. Regardless of how dissatisfied you may be with your current situation, can you choose death? Can you throw yourself into the bottomless darkness?
Ichiro Kishimi, ‘The Courage to Be Happy’
A stark but true insight. To attain true transformation, a part of your old self must die. It’s a terrifying, but necessary, prospect.
When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.
Pema Chödrön
The change itself isn’t the problem. The resistance – the friction we create by clinging to the past – is what hurts.
Read more: 145 Suffering Quotes – Finding Light in the Darkness
Uncertainty quotes
Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
Simone de Beauvoir
The future is an illusion; the only time you have to act is this moment.
Do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
Rumi
Maybe we’ve been looking at the world from the wrong angle all along. Who knows?
I am a believer of butterfly effect. A small positive vibration can change the entire cosmos.
Amit Ray
A reminder that our small, seemingly insignificant choices can carry vast, unseen consequences – hence the need for us to be mindful in everything we do.
Every decision or non-decision shifts the Universe in a whole new direction.
Ray A. Davis
There is no neutral ground. Even the choice to do nothing is an active one that shapes the future.
Positive embracing change quotes
Death & Uncertainty Quotes
Life is uncertain; death is certain.
Buddha
A simple truth that transcends all cultural and religious frameworks. We all have one fixed point in an otherwise unpredictable journey.
Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying.
Thomas Paine
We will all die, but when? Nobody knows for sure. That’s why we need to reflect on it frequently – and to live every moment with intention and gratitude.
No one knows when their hour will come. As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.
Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
Indeed. This knowledge should not make us morbid, but should make us cherish the time we have.
Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes.
Buddha
Don’t procrastinate on what’s important. This day is the only one you’re guaranteed.
Buddhist quotes about uncertainty
The fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
Socrates
We are all afraid of what we don’t know. But what if death is not an end, but a transition? To fear it is to assume we know, which is the opposite of wisdom.
If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life.
Martin Heidegger
Don’t hide from the fact of your own mortality. Using it as a lens clarifies what truly matters and strips away the trivial anxieties.
Read more: 72 Memento Mori Quotes – Remember You’re Mortal!
Uncertainty of death quotes
Faith & Uncertainty Quotes
I pray but I am lost. Am I just praying to silence?
Sebastian Rodrigues, ‘Silence‘ (2016)
The cry of honest faith. Not a triumphant shout, but a desperate whisper in the dark, hoping for an answer.
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. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.
Anne Lamott
It’s about living with the questions, instead of trying/ claiming to have all the answers.
The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.
Thomas Merton
Faith that has never been tested by doubt is fragile. Ony by wrestling with despair and surviving may one know if anything is real at all.
Fanatics do not have faith – they have belief. With faith you let go. You trust. Whereas with belief you cling.
Yann Martel, ‘Life of Pi’
Belief demands and controls. Faith embraces and flows. Which one applies to you?
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
Martin Luther King Jr.
There is no need to see the entire plan. You just need enough trust to take the next step – at this moment!
You must understand that seeing is believing, but also know that believing is seeing.
Denis Waitley
Sometimes, you must believe first for the possibility to even appear. It’s about using your awareness – your willpower – to drive your actions (and others); that is the first step toward change in reality!
Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection.
Søren Kierkegaard
It’s not a blind leap. It’s a conscious one, taken after you’ve questioned yourself a lot – and are completely honest in every thought.
Uncertainty quotes
At the point where the road swings off (and where that is cannot be stated objectively, since it is precisely subjectivity), objective knowledge is suspended. Objectively he then has only uncertainty, but this is precisely what intensifies the infinite passion of inwardness, and truth is precisely the daring venture of choosing the objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite.
Søren Kierkegaard
Many times, faith isn’t a logical conclusion; it’s a passionate, inward choice to embrace the thing reason alone cannot prove.
I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.
Immanuel Kant, ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
True. After all, we are mortal creatures with limits in intellectual. What we perceive is ony phenomena, not noumena itself.
Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.
Richard Rohr
Stop struggling. The current is real, and it’s already carrying you!
Philosophical Quotes about Uncertainty
It is not necessary that in resoluteness one should explicitly know the origin of the possibilities upon which that resoluteness projects itself.
Martin Heidegger, ‘Being and Time’
Don’t get paralyzed by “why.” A resolute person acts from a place of deep, instinctual possibility, even if they can’t articulate it yet.
Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.
Immanuel Kant
We are wired to ask questions we cannot possibly answer (and if we do, it will soon turn into another question). This tension is part of the human condition.
All thought must, directly or indirectly… relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.
Immanuel Kant
We can’t just think in pure, empty space. All our abstract ideas are, at their root, tied to our physical, sensory experience of the world.
Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides.
Karl Jaspers
You are not a static object, but are always becoming. You are defined by your potential, not just your past.
It is the search for the truth, not possession of the truth which is the way of philosophy. Its questions are more relevant than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.
Karl Jaspers
The questions are more valuable than the answers. The process of seeking is what makes a philosopher, a seeker.
The obscurity of the external world is a function of my own obscurity to myself; the world has no intrinsic obscurity.
Gabriel Marcel
A very personal, reflective idea. If the world seems dark and confusing, perhaps the first place to look is within.
Truth is a pathless land.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
No guru, book, or religion can give it to you. You must find it yourself, in your own way.
Uncertainty quotes
In our search for truth, we are walking on a long pole that extends into the darkness. Doubting our common sense and engaging in continual self-questioning, we just continue to walk on that pole without any idea of how far it may go. And then, from out of the darkness one hears a voice inside saying, ‘Nothing further lies ahead. Here is truth.’ So, some people stop listening to their internal voice and stop walking. They jump down from the pole. Do they find truth there? I don’t know. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But stopping in one’s steps and jumping off the pole midway is what I call religion. With philosophy, one keeps walking without end. It doesn’t matter if gods are there or not.
Ichiro Kishimi, ‘The Courage to Be Happy’
A fantastic metaphor. Which path will you choose – accepting a pre-given answer without further question, or pressing on in search of a deeper truth?
Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
Bertrand Russell, ‘A History of Western Philosophy’
Isn’t that just what self-discovery is about? To learn to act with purpose without the crutch of comforting, yet potentially inauthentic, premises.
A truth which comes to us from outside always bears the stamp of uncertainty. We can believe only what appears to each one of us in our own hearts as truth.
Rudolf Steiner
You can hear a thousand teachings, but they only become true when they resonate with your own inner voice.
Spiritual & Religious Quotes about Uncertainty
If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Would it? Would humanity bury all seeds of goodness and destroy itself in the process?
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
Our current understanding is just a dim, blurry image of a much greater reality. As such, we should always remain humble and open to every new discovery.
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
John 20:29
Can you believe without needing physical proof? Can we take such a leap of faith? Isn’t it that we are doing it many times in life – not even aware or conscious of it?
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:34
Just live in the present. This single day has enough challenges; don’t import tomorrow’s as well!
Uncertainty quotes Bible
Overcome your uncertainties and free yourself from dwelling on sorrow. If you delight in existence, you will become a guide to those who need you, revealing the path to many.
Sutta Nipata
Our calling is not to just endure uncertainty, but to overcome it. Finding joy in existence is the key to helping others.
Read more: 120 Overcoming Sadness Quotes – From Sorrow to Strength
The task of religion is not to teach us to bow our heads and accept God’s inscrutable will. It is to help us find the resources to live meaningfully and to go on believing, even in a world where people often don’t get what they deserve.
Harold Kushner
Rather than a promotion for passive acceptance of fate, one should view religions as a source of strength to live virtuously, even when life seems unfair – and the universe seems indifferent.
If you call ‘religious’ a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really.
Viktor Frankl
From the founder of logotherapy. It’s a mature “faith” that accepts that something is simply too vast for our minds to grasp.
Read more: 60 Quotes on the Meaning of Life – Wisdom for Life Pilgrims
Movie Quotes About Uncertainty
Many of the truths that we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, ‘Star Wars’
“Truth” is not always absolute; many times, it’s a matter of context and perspective. That’s where compassion comes into play – to both oneself and others.
Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.
Yoda, ‘Star Wars’
A warning against overconfidence. The future is not a fixed point to be seen, but a cloud of possibilities.
The Uncertainty Principle. It proves we can’t ever really know… what’s going on. So it shouldn’t bother you. Not being able to figure anything out. Although you will be responsible for this on the mid-term.
Larry Gopnik, ‘A Serious Man’ (2009)
Well, we just have to accept it, right? Life’s inherent randomness. At least, what we can do is to join the “dance” – and be mindful in every moment.
I donʼt know if we each have a destiny, or if weʼre all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe itʼs both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.
Forrest Gump (1994)
Maybe it’s not either/or. Maybe we are both passengers and pilots at the same time. What does that mean then? Just live authentically – without being bothered too much by what is right or wrong.
Every path is the right path. Everything could’ve been anything else. And it would have just as much meaning.
Mr. Nobody (2009)
If every choice leads to a different, valid life, then the “agony” of choosing is an illusion. One that many of us fall victim to.
Uncertainty quotes
Only in a leap from the lion’s head, shall he prove his worth.
Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade (1989)
The “leap of faith” defined. The bridge appears only after you’ve committed to the jump. Will you have enough faith to plunge yourself into the unknown – knowing that there’s a slight possibility that will be your last act?
Life finds a way.
Dr. Ian Malcolm, ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993)
A reminder of the relentless, chaotic, and beautiful persistence of nature against all foolish attempts to control it.
To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.
James Thurber, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ (2013)
Life isn’t about safety; it’s about engaging, seeing, and feeling – all of which require leaping into the unknown.
Read more: 20 Best Existential Movies for the Questioning Heart
Funny Quotes about Uncertainty
Not knowing is Buddha.
Japanese Proverb
All that striving for enlightenment – only to realize the goal was to comfortably “not know”! Maybe, as someone said long ago, what is “ignorance” in the eyes of men is rather “wisdom” in the eyes of an awakened one.
Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
Mark Twain
The more you learn, the more you realize just how much you don’t know. Pretty ironic, right?
When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.
Mark Twain
Honesty is such a surprise, it’s the ultimate wildcard. Perhaps part of the reason is that truthfulness is so rare in today’s world, right? How about you? Are you being truthful in every thought and word?
Final Thoughts
As you may see from the list of quotes above, uncertainty isn’t a problem to be solved – nor a monster to be defeated. It is, perhaps, the very element we are meant to breathe.
It is the soil for our faith, the canvas for our creativity, and the space in which our courage is forged.
It’s the “sure uncertainty” Shakespeare wrote about, the “delicious ambiguity” Gilda Radner celebrated, and the “pathless land” Krishnamurti saw.
Finding peace in the “not knowing” isn’t a one-time event. It’s a practice.
It’s the daily, sometimes hourly, choice to stop demanding answers – and to simply be present with the messy, unfinished story of our lives.
You don’t need to have the full map. You don’t need to know what’s at the end of the road.
All you need is the courage for the next step, knowing that this – this very moment – is also part of the dance.
Bon voyage!
Other resources you might be interested in:
- 77 Learning from Failure Quotes: Moving On from Past Mistakes
- 100 Quotes About Overcoming Obstacles: Triumph in Adversity
- 50 Push Yourself Quotes to Move Forward & Inspire Success
- 40 Life Coaching Quotes: Levelling Up Your Life
- 140 Introvert Quotes: Embrace Your Quiet Strength
Let’s Tread the Path Together, Shall We?
