Quotes About Questions

Current intelligence-testing practices require examinees to answer but not to pose questions. In requiring only the answering of questions, these tests are missing a vital half of intelligence- the asking of questions.

There's no necessary connection between maximizing social utility or economic wealth and creating a flourishing democracy. The first does not guarantee the second. The only way to create a flourishing democracy is to find ways to reason together about the big questions, including hard questions about justice and the common good, to reason together about these questions so that we as citizens can decide how to shape the forces that govern our lives.

I feel that life is a series of very interesting questions, and very poor answers. But I myself am willing to settle for the questions. If the questions are interesting, I feel I evoke them in what I do. I feel that should be good enough for everyone else.

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

It wasn't that I hated being asked a bunch of questions. I had nothing against questions. I just didn't like listening to them, because some questions take forever to make sense. Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don't care about the elephant because it's only one thing when you've been thinking about a million others.

Systematic theology will ask questions like "What are the attributes of God? What is sin? What does the cross achieve?" Biblical theology tends to ask questions such as "What is the theology of the prophecy of Isaiah? What do we learn from John's Gospel? How does the theme of the temple work itself out across the entire Bible?" Both approaches are legitimate; both are important. They are mutually complementary.

I do interview senior candidates at the home office or many of our hotel or restaurant General Manager candidates. My two favorite questions are "Tell me about a failure in your career, what you learned from it, and how you've leveraged this lesson" and "All of us are misperceived at one time or another. What's the most common way you're misperceived in the workplace and why?" Both of these questions require a certain amount of self-awareness and a willingness to not give pat, normal answers that we offer experience in interviews.

By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions.

I feel like people expect me to give them easy answers, but there aren't really easy answers. There are only harder questions. And unless we get to the harder questions part, about what this conversation is really about...of course I want an immigration bill to pass. I want people to have a driver's license and work permits and green cards and passports. But this conversation transcends this bill. We're not going to have a perfect bill. This is politics. I feel like my job is instead of giving people easy answers, my job is to actually to ask people to probe deeper.

There are no dumb male questions. There are dumb males, but not dumb male questions.

All joking aside, I'm a television watcher and I get frustrated with shows sometimes when they set up puzzles and then they don't give answers. It's just more questions and more questions.

Every time you get into a new job, new location, you have an amazing opportunity in front of you. You get to play dumb for as long as people will allow you to play dumb. You get to ask all the dumb questions, you get to ask multiple people the dumb questions, and you get to make mistakes. Thats how you stand out in the crowd.

We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.

Why do leaders fail? Isolation and inability to learn. They are afraid to express doubt, admit vulnerability or seek advice from subordinates. Leaders must actively work to seek feedback and a reality check. They must be open to asking questions and framing issues. As the world becomes more complex and global, the risk of isolation becomes greater. The need for leaders to be open to learning becomes greater. Great leaders will need to ask the right questions and balance inquiry with advocacy.

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

For me there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer, because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question.

Can we afford clean water? Can we afford rivers and lakes and streams and oceans which continue to make possible life on this planet? Can we afford life itself? Those questions were never asked as we destroyed the waters of our nation, and they deserve no answers as we finally move to restore and renew them. These questions answer themselves.

A nation like China has become one of the biggest production fields for exporting cheap labor, which also re-questions our history and past, re-questions human desire, and the human illusions of the past.

The traditional practice is that the justices don't ask the attorney general any questions, so as not to embarrass him. But Bobby Kennedy had let them know that he didn't mind if they asked him questions and they did.

But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions.

The book Forest Dark wants to provoke questions about what is reality and why are we so given to believe that reality is firm and unbendable. There's a whole host of questions that the book is asking about that. Why do we believe that the world is only one way and as we see it? Why are we not open to the ways in which it might be otherwise.

I have simply taken some of the same questions and reposed them in new ways. But, you see, I must live. Right? I mean I can't stay the same for everyone to be consumed as the author of "Gender trouble". I have to continue to live and that means I have to "reposer les questions".

I see my poems as interlinked. No poem gives an answer. It may offer other questions, it may instigate other questions that then become poems.

The questions people have are sometimes soulful, sometimes zany, sometimes incoherent. I want to make a 'zine with just the questions I get emailed to me.

Our job is to ask questions of children so that children internalize these questions and ask them of themselves and their own emerging drafts.

Right now, I see a lot of alarming trends inside Russia, especially in Siberia, which I represent in the parliament. People start to ask questions: If we mine all the natural resources - if we have all the oil, all the gas, all the coal, all the gold, all the diamonds - why the hell do we need central Russia? They are just eating at our resources. Without Moscow having a response for this, it would face very nasty questions such as one that was asked during my recent reelection campaign - it actually became a slogan of my campaign - "Stop feeding Moscow."

Questions are far more effective than defensive statements. They do not imply agreement, but they do convey interest and a desire to understand and facilitate an environment for peak performance, a central thread of effective leadership.... The next time someone accuses you of virtually anything, ask some questions. Resolving the situation may take more time, but the outcome will likely be more productive for both of you.

Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not ultimately scientific questions.

The answer to the big questions in running is the same as the answer to the big questions in life: Do the best with what you've got.

I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.

The message has to go to the streets, it's imperative that we reach those who may not get to a church. We receive their questions, it's important that the world asks questions.

Before you give advice, that is to say advice which you have not been asked to give, it is well to put to yourself two questions - namely, what is your motive for giving it, and what is it likely to be worth? If these questions were always asked, and honestly answered, there would be less advice given.

The official keepers of the Holocaust wage an international campaign to silence the disturbing questions. Most people never even hear the revisionist position because Jewish forces dominate the media and block mainstream access to material that questions Holocaust orthodoxy.

The answers to these questions will determine your success or failure. 1) Can people trust me to do what's right? 2) Am I committed to doing my best? 3) Do I care about other people and show it? If the answers to these questions are yes, there is no way you can fail.

Every time I ask questions about sex, I always end up asking questions about death.

All the songs are written from the perspective of a person, being me, who had trouble with some of the big questions in life, like, are we meant to be together with the same person for the rest of our lives? Or, is it frowned upon if a man goes through many women at all times? What is the meaning of love versus sex? It's just a lot of big questions, I guess, that are really difficult to answer. People see it very differently, but people sometimes suppress their lust. And it's not only sex. It could be lusting for anything that's supposedly very bad for you but can be good for you, too.

I'm really sort of cautious about being too didactic. To me there are writers that can do that, but I think they drown in that after a while. I do think the job of a writer is to raise questions and nobody likes the questions being asked.

We begin to ask questions, such as: "What is the purpose of life? What is my true nature? What is the source and origin of this entire creation?" When questions of this kind arise in a person's mind, his or her quest for knowledge begins.

I think it's very sad that CNN leads Jeb Bush, down a road by starting off virtually all the questions, "Mr. Trump this, Mister" - I think it's very sad. I watched the first debate, and the first long number of questions were, "Mr. Trump said this, Mr. Trump said that. Mr. Trump" - these poor guys - although, I must tell you, [Rick] Santorum, good guy. Governor [Mike] Huckabee, good guy. They were very nice, and I respect them greatly. But I thought it was very unfair that virtually the entire early portion of the debate was Trump this, Trump that, in order to get ratings, I guess.

We have always dovetailed our cognition to our tools, but when our tools start dovetailing back, where do I end and where does the tool begin? It is going to be a really Twilight Zonish situation. It is definitely interesting. Once Google is in a blood cell sized device in our brain, do we become part Google? There are certainly interesting things to think about and provocative questions, but I don't think those provocative questions are going to do anything to slow down the onset of these technologies arriving and becoming even more pervasive.

No space, no time, no gravity, no electromagnetism, no particles. Nothing. We are back where Plato, Aristotle and Parmenides struggled with the great questions: How Come the Universe, How Come Us, How Come Anything? But happily also we have around the answer to these questions. That's us.

I think that the sheer fact that music can raise certain questions or put topics on the agenda has in itself already an effect. Just like any other art of cultural expression can do that - books, films, photos, painting - it can bring people together who share certain ideals, who don't find their ideas expressed properly, or even expressed at all, in the mainstream media.

We need to challenge our own theology, challenge the curriculum of our Bible schools and our seminaries, and ask simple questions. Are we teaching and producing ministers who have the right message?

Anyone who agrees to be interviewed must decide where to draw the line between what is public and what is private. But the line can shift, depending on who is asking the questions. What puts someone on guard isn't necessarily the fear of being 'found out.' It sometimes is just the fear of being misunderstood.

Asking the questions - that's what changes lives. Every cell in your body is awake with inquiry. And you cannot believe the old thoughts again.

The problem with American cinema is that because you're making films with huge amounts of money you need to hit the lowest common denominator in order to make it back and so therefore you're not allowed to play with moral ambiguities or ask questions.

I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.

I also think there's too many players who say the same boring answers, they don't even have to turn up to interviews because journalists answer their own questions the way they ask them. Unfortunately the way it is now players are so afraid to say anything, but I'd like them to be honest.