quotations about questions
Remember, an easy question can have an easy answer. But a hard question must have a hard answer. And for the hardest questions of all, there may be no answer -- except faith.
CHARLES SHEFFIELD
Brother to Dragons
Ask not a foolish question in public.
STILPO
attributed, Day's Collacon
A civil question deserves a civil answer.
MARTIN H. MANSER
The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs
To stand in the midst of ... this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity in existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning ... that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human has this feeling just because he is human.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
attributed, The Gay Science
Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.
KARL JASPERS
Way to Wisdom
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
attributed, Reader's Digest, Volume 37, 1940
Questions are often more effective than statements in moving others. Or to put it more appropriately, since the research shows that when the facts are on your side, questions are more persuasive than statements, don't you think you should be pitching with questions?
DANIEL H. PINK
attributed, The Future of Strategy
Old questions are not answered--they only go out of fashion.
DONALD SCHÖN
attributed, Governing Health: The Politics of Health Policy
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without ever having asked a clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
Never surrender a good question for a mere answer.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Living by Questions", Oprah
Whatever you eye falls on -- for it will fall on what you love -- will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go.
MARY ROSE O'REILLEY
The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of A Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
Where the question is a jest, the fittest answer is a scoff.
ARCHIMEDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
To a man full of questions make no answer at all.
PLATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Our Theatres in the Nineties
For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them.
LEO TOLSTOY
A Confession
There are some questions that shouldn't be asked until a person is mature enough to appreciate the answers.
ANNE BISHOP
Daughter of the Blood
Why ... did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions -- not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
No one has the answer: we are answer and question.
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Family and Other Essays
An able man is not ashamed to put questions both to the humble and the wise.
TSHANG
attributed, Day's Collacon
The power to question is the basis of all human progress.
INDIRA GANDHI
attributed, Misbehave: Speak Truth to Power