Not Knowing Quotes

To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.

~ Criss Jami

Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child's relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don't know as much as we think we know.

~ Criss Jami

A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn't know.

~ Criss Jami

So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.

~ Criss Jami

To respect a mystery is to make way for the answer.

~ Criss Jami

All knowledge meets an end at the question '...Why?

~ Criss Jami

Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.

~ Criss Jami

Because you're always learning, the chief lesson remains: you still know nothing.

~ Criss Jami

Time doesn't heal all wounds, only distance can lessen the sting of them.

~ Shannon L. Alder

True saddness is when someone still thinks your the same person after all these years. They brand you because of their own ego, fear and lack of spirituality. What's sadder is when they are Christian.

~ Shannon L. Alder

How little we know the ones we love. How little we know of anyone, in the end.

~ Aria Beth Sloss

Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.

~ Criss Jami

Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.

~ Criss Jami

During the flames of controversy, opinions, mass disputes, conflict, and world news, sometimes the most precious, refreshing, peaceful words to hear amidst all the chaos are simply and humbly 'I don't know.

~ Criss Jami

History has shown us time and time again that you don't have to know someone to love them with all your heart.

~ Shannon L. Alder

In your diary, you quoted old Jiko saying something about not-knowing, how not-knowing is the most intimate way, or did I just dream that?Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think maybe it's true, even though I don't really like uncertainty. I'd much rather 'know', but then again, not-knowing keeps all the possibilities open. It keeps all the worlds alive.

~ Ruth Ozeki

Silence might be a shout for the truth. It might be the speech that someday, in its truest, most uncontaminated, unadulterated state, all will be revealed.

~ Criss Jami

God wants us to humbly and sincerely ask him things. How often do you enjoy people talking about you without taking the time to get to know you?

~ Criss Jami

It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head.

~ Criss Jami

I truly do not know, and that unnameable feeling that comes with not knowing: it must be worse than grief. It must.

~ Dexter Palmer

When a small group of people come together to relive the Salem witch hunts, God cries. For if anything is sorrowful to God, it is evil done in his name. When you find out you were not given the truth, how will you live with yourself?

~ Shannon L. Alder

Knowledge is too final. Not knowing lets you dream a little.

~ Shaun Hick

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you were wrong? Maybe, you only saw your point of view and you never once put yourself in the other person's shoes. Maybe, walking away from the senseless drama and spiteful criticism isn't the best thing to do. Maybe, for just once in your life you could wear another person's confusion, pain or misunderstanding. Maybe, your future doesn't require explaining yourself or offering an explanation for your indifference, but your character and reputation does. What if one day you find out that you didn't have all the information you thought you did? What if you find out that your presence was needed for healing? What if you only knew half of it and the other half was just your fear and anger translating everything you experienced? What if you were wrong? What if the same thing happened to you?

~ Shannon L. Alder

My confidence is in the idea that I may be wrong on this or that. No man in this life should ever have to bear the burden of perfection.

~ Criss Jami

It's okay to be honest about not knowing rather than spreading falsehood. While it is often said that honesty is the best policy, silence is the second best policy.

~ Criss Jami

Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I knew beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. I thought how terrible the nights must have been in a time when men knew the things were there and were deadly. But no, that's wrong. If I knew they were there, I would have weapons against them, charms, prayers, some kind of alliance with forces equally strong but on my side. Knowing they were not there made me defenseless against them and perhaps more afraid.

~ John Steinbeck

Quit making believe you don’t know.You do know. Act on it.

~ Alan Cohen

I don't know. That was typical Sajaki; like all the genuinely clever people Sylveste had met he knew better than to feign understanding where none existed.

~ Alastair Reynolds

Can one come 2 conclusions,Before the question is conceived?

~ Tupac Shakur

I don't know what we're doing here – you and me … I don't know what we are or what we can be, but this doesn't have to be about that. This can just be about … a chance. Taking a chance.

~ Dianna Hardy

Among the many things that made the Professor an excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn't afraid to say 'we don't know.' For the Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn't have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth. It was as important to teach us about the unknown or the unknowable as it was to teach us what had already been safely proven.

~ Yōko Ogawa

The only thing worse than not knowing where she belonged...was knowing where she didn't.

~ Tessa Shaffer

He was attracted to this edge of unknowing, of hope and fear, he instinctively knew that surfing it was precondition for growth and transformation. And for feeling alive. Waking up and going out into the world not knowing what each day would hold, taking life as it comes, relinquishing any illusion of control. That's fresh, that's a good morning!

~ Matt Padwick

When dealing with critics always remember this: Critics judge things based on what is outside of their content of understanding.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Most argument, and in fact most conflict, has nothing to do with the present. It's always about the past or the future. People can't agree on the details of what has happened or is going to happen. But we rarely know what has happened, and we never know what is going to happen. What is really at dispute is how we will deal with not knowing.

~ Steven Galloway

Not knowing trauma or experiencing or remembering it in a dissociative way is not a passive shutdown of perception or of memory. Not knowing is rather an active, persistent, violent refusal; an erasure, a destruction of form and of representation. The fundamental essence of the death instinct, the instinct that destroys all psychic structure is apparent in this phenomenon. . . . The death drive is against knowing and against the developing of knowledge and elaborating [it].

~ Dori Laub

With respect to the acceptance of dissociative disorders, as with most issues in life, it is counterproductive to spend time trying to convince people of things they don't want to know.

~ Warwick Middleton

Sometimes a woman is afraid to be without security or without certainty, for even a short time. She has more excuses than dogs have hairs. She must just simply dive in and stand not knowing what will happen next.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

I hate missing everything. That's why I want to marry well and be a grand lady. Then I can host all the parties, all the time, and see everything that is going on always. How can you stand not knowing?

~ Gail Carriger