Quotes About Questions

Science will always raise philosophical questions like, is any scientific theory or model correct? How do we know? Are unobserved things real? etc. and it seems to me of great importance that these questions are not just left to scientists, but that there are thinkers who make it their business to think as clearly and slowly about these questions as it is possible to. Great scientists do not always make the best philosophers.

So when I say that I think we would have a different ethical level, particularly in corporate America, if there were more women involved, I mean that what women are best at is asking questions. Women ask questions over and over again. It drives men nuts. Women tend to ask the detailed questions; they want to know the answers.

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.

Artists have their existential questions as human beings, and they address these questions in their works. But they are also thinking in a broader sense when they participate in a social and political debate through their works. Often the most important voices of artists in the political and the social debate are focused on originality in their works. We can see this in historical pieces, like "Guernica" by Picasso. "Guernica" was an extremely important manifestation and critique against war, but it was important and powerful because it was also an incredibly original and powerful work of art.

I love the early process of asking questions about a story and deciding which questions matter most.

I'm a big believer in pose some questions and then answer a few of them before you move onto the next set of questions.

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.

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

I just always remember myself as the teenager with questions about movies and screenwriting. I would hope that there was somebody out there who would answer those questions, and so, if I can take a few minutes to do it, I will. It's not threatening for us. We're not being stalked, so it's easier.

If we respect students abilities to define their own experiences, to generate their own hypotheses, and to discover new ways of categorizing the world, we might not be so quick to evaluate the adequacy of their answers. We might, instead, begin listening to their questions. Out of the questions of students come some of the most creative ideas and discoveries.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

I have been very afraid of writing about other cultures and countries. I've been worried about getting the research wrong. I ask a lot of questions. I try to visit the area. If I'm not able to do that, I search out people from that country who live elsewhere and ask questions.

People have been educated to expect answers, even before the questions come along. It's the TV principle. You offer three possible answers before the questions come to relax and calm the audience.

Political scientists don't work at banks which is a problem. As political issues become more important for the markets, analysts at banks are asked all sorts of questions they don't have the ability to answer. And if you're getting paid to answer questions as analysts at banks are you never want to be in the position of saying you don't know.

I'm really much better at asking questions than answering them, since asking questions is like a constant deflection of oneself.

I do know dumb-ass questions when I see dumb-ass questions.

Does man Progress? A thousand questions answered yesterday create a thousand questions today.

The "brightness" of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions.

The examen is a form of personal inventory. At day’s end, spend time in prayerful reflection on your day: your comings and goings, routines and disruptions, work and play, discoveries and disappointments. Think about who you met, or missed. Think about your moments of aloneness. In all, ask two questions: when was I most alive, most present, most filled and fulfilled today? And when was I most taxed, stressed, distracted, depleted today? A simpler, and more spiritually focused, version of those questions: when did I feel closest to God, and when farthest?

What is essential is not the answer but the questions; the answers indeed are the death of the life that is in the questions.

Stop asking yourself questions that have no meaning. Or if they have, you'll find out when you need to -- find out both the questions and the answers.

I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.

The questions you ask consistently will create either enervation or enjoyment, indignation or inspiration, misery or magic. Ask the questions that will uplift your spirit and push you along the path of human excellence

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.

I didn't resolve the questions... and I find that entertaining. And if my life were to end tomorrow, it would be fulfilled in that manner. I would say, 'The questions have been terrific.'

Increasingly, our leaders must deal with dangers that threaten the entire world, where an understanding of those dangers and the possible solutions depends on a good grasp of science. The ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, questions of diet and heredity. All require scientific literacy. Can Americans choose the proper leaders and support the proper programs if they themselves are scientifically illiterate? The whole premise of democracy is that it is safe to leave important questions to the court of public opinion - but is it safe to leave them to the court of public ignorance?

Our job is not to answer questions, its to ask the right questions...that get us to the right answer.

Before writing, I start with a series of questions, specific things I need to know before I can write the book... That list grows and changes as I do more and more research. But when I've answered the bulk of the questions, I begin to write.

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.

The game was that of continually inventing a possible world, or a piece of a possible world, and then of comparing it with the real world... a race without end... What mattered more than the answers were the questions... For me, this world of questions and the provisional, this chase after an answer that was always put off to the next day, all that was euphoric. I lived in the future... I had turned my anxiety into my profession.

Something fundamental changes when people begin to ask questions together. The questions create more of a learning conversation than the normal stale debate about problems.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

I just would like to say that over more than a quarter-century as a scientist and a believer, I find absolutely nothing in conflict between agreeing with Richard [Dawkins] in practically all of his conclusions about the natural world, and also saying that I am still able to accept and embrace the possibility that there are answers that science isn't able to provide about the natural world - the questions about why instead of the questions about how. I'm interested in the whys.

In each age there is a series of pressing questions which must be asked and answered. On the correctness of the questions depends the survival of those who ask; on the quality of the answers depends the quality of the life those survivors will lead.

If sculpture can really deal with the body, because we all inhabit ourselves, and if sculpture can really do that, which it is supposed to be able to do, and through it ask questions, philosophical questions, about being, I think these are all things we work on, all of us in our different ways, so perhaps somewhere in there, there are moments where dumb objects can speak.

Everything we know has its origin in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings. Then how is it possible that no more than one in one hundred students has ever been exposed to an extended and systematic study of the art and science of question-asking? How come Alan Bloom did not mention this, or E. D. Hirsh, Jr., or so many others who have written books on how to improve our schools? Did they simply fail to notice that the principal intellectual instrument available to hu­man beings is not examined in school?

The college kids should think hard about what they're doing. If you have a great idea for a company, there's no right time to start it, and it's often better to start it sooner rather than later. I went to Stanford undergrad and Stanford Law School, and if I had to do it over again, I might still do those things, but I wish I had asked the type of questions like, why I was doing it, was it just for the status and prestige, or was it because I was really interested in the substance of it.

I can't make wine simple. But I can make it fun and beautiful, instead of esoteric and intimidating. The minute you realize it's OK to stumble along like the rest of us, asking questions and paying attention to your own reactions, then you'll begin what I hope will be a lifelong love affair with wine.

I do not make films which are prescriptive, and I do not make films that are conclusive. You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong. They're ambivalent. You walk away with work to do. My films are a sort of investigation. They ask questions . . .. Sometimes I hear that some [Hollywood] studio is interested in me. Then they discover that this is the guy who works with no script, that there is no casting discussion, no interference, that I have the final cut, and that does it.

I don't want this to be a distraction. This has been distracting enough. I'm not going to rehash this going forward. I'm sure other people are going to have questions about it, but we've got a big season coming up.

His [Ben Okri's] work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called "destiny" to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit?

In the second half of life, the questions become: 'Who, apart from the roles you play, are you? What does the soul ask of you? Do you have the wherewithal to shift course, to deconstruct your painfully achieved identity, risking failure, marginalization and loss of collective approval?' No small task.

The art of clinical diagnosis lies in the ability to ask the right questions.

Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent," said Miss Susan. "But answers do.

It's a time when a lot of principle virtues are being tested. Do we still believe in the truth? Do we still believe in empathy? Do we still believe the protection of the weakest among us? These are yes or no questions, but the means of communication is all tied up with those virtues and you can't abandon those virtues as you pursue them.

There are many, many books I've read and I think this is quite naïve actually because we all just try to uncover something. But the universe at large is full of questions that we still don't know anything about and there will be always young people brilliant who are going to make new discoveries.

Feeling attractive didn't come until I was 29... What is it about a woman being in her late 30s that brings out the "Oh, my gosh, are you worried?" questions? Worried? What about? Thirty-eight, 39, 40, 50! Great! Still alive!

There are always a lot of leading questions and opinions. Of course, our work is creative, and it's subjective.