Life & Wisdom Quote by Steve Hackett

Hackett draws a clean line that feels obvious until you notice how much it provokes. “Religion deals in certainties” isn’t just a description; it’s a diagnosis of a psychological service. Certainty is religion’s product offering: a stable story about meaning, morality, and what happens when the lights go out. The phrasing “deals in” is slyly transactional, suggesting certainty is not merely held but traded, distributed, reinforced. It implies an economy of belief where doubt is costly and clarity is a kind of currency.

Then he flips to philosophy, but not as an equal rival - more like an adjacent temperament. “Deals more in un-answered questions” frames philosophy as a practice that keeps the wound open on purpose. The hyphenated “un-answered” reads almost like a refusal: not just questions that haven’t been answered yet, but questions that resist being closed, because the closure is the point of contention. “More” also matters: he avoids the lazy binary. Religions ask questions; philosophers commit to positions. The difference is which impulse they privilege - settlement or exploration.

The subtext lands in a modern, post-certainty culture where institutions that promise absolutes can look comforting or coercive, depending on your experience. Hackett’s line gently valorizes intellectual humility without sermonizing about it. It’s a defense of curiosity as an ethical stance: not knowing, and staying honest about that, as a form of discipline rather than a failure.