quotations about questions
Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.
SUSANNE LANGER
Feeling and Form
Questions are dangerous, for they have answers.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
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
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without ever having asked a clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
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
The answer is a mirror of the question.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
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
Where the question is a jest, the fittest answer is a scoff.
ARCHIMEDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
The ignorant start questions which have been already answered thousands of years ago by the wise.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
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 really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.
ANNE RICE
The Vampire Lestat
A man becomes learned by asking questions.
AHMED VESIK
attributed, Day's Collacon
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
SCOTT ADAMS
attributed, Laugh Off: The Comedy Showdown Between Real Life and the Pros
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
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
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
Are you going to answer my questions, or do I have to whack you with a stick until delicious candy surprises fall out?
MOLLY HARPER
Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs
Men certainly have a way of keeping women in suspense, and an unwillingness to answer questions even when we ask them.
ELIZA LESLIE
The Escorted Lady
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