The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the value of uncertainty and the pursuit of knowledge over the allure of absolute security and faith.
Christopher Hitchens argues that a life anchored in certainty and impermeable faith is less valuable than one that embraces uncertainty and the pursuit of knowledge. He suggests that by accepting not knowing everything, one opens themselves up to continuous learning and personal growth, living life on the edge of discovery and insight.
In practice
This quote can be used to inspire students at a graduation ceremony about the importance of lifelong learning.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
You think you're being broken but you're really being broken open...and that's where the healing happens, in those broken places...if you'll allow it.
Most organizations don't fall apart as a result of one big blow. Most relationships don't end because of one grand argument. Most lives don't fall to pieces due to one sad event. No, I suggest to you that sustained failure happens as the consequence of small, daily acts of neglect that stack up over time to lead to a blow up - and break down.
It's not the situation, but whether we react, or respond, to the situation that's important.
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