quotations about questions
Never surrender a good question for a mere answer.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Living by Questions", Oprah
Where the question is a jest, the fittest answer is a scoff.
ARCHIMEDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Well, it's not so easy to give an answer when you ask a stupid question!
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
"The Garden of Paradise"
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
Everything in this world can volunteer some reply, what takes up time is posing the questions.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
To a man full of questions make no answer at all.
PLATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without ever having asked a clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
attributed, 101 Best Ways to Get Ahead
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
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
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
An able man is not ashamed to put questions both to the humble and the wise.
TSHANG
attributed, Day's Collacon
No one has the answer: we are answer and question.
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Family and Other Essays
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
The power to question is the basis of all human progress.
INDIRA GANDHI
attributed, Misbehave: Speak Truth to Power
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
A civil question deserves a civil answer.
MARTIN H. MANSER
The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs
Why are things beautiful? I don't know. That's a good question. Isn't it pleasing when you ask a question of a person, a teacher, or a speaker, and he or she says, That's a good question? Don't you feel good when that happens?
NICHOLSON BAKER
A Box of Matches
When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.
JOHN LOCKE
First Treatise of Government