Hans Kung Quotes

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

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

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt.... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth.

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

Science is uncertain.

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.

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

There is nothing so uncertain as a sure thing.

There's a sense in all my novels that nothing is certain.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

I don't know the future.

To me, nothing ever feels like a sure thing. I cling to that because it's very important you don't ever think anything is a sure thing.

I can't predict the future.

Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it.

...our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

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.

My unconditional sure thing is that I don't have one.

I say this all the time: All I know is I know nothing at all.

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

But is all this true?" said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork." "You mean you don't KNOW it's true?" said Brutha. "I THINK it might be," said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

Nothing is ever certain.

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).