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16341a1 If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. proverbs paranoia questions wit Thomas Pynchon
a9993e1 "Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?" Mort thought for a moment. "No," he said eventually, "what?" There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right." fate questions Terry Pratchett
673d196 Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself. questions Tom Robbins
cc15a79 After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked--as I am surprisingly often--why I bother to get up in the mornings. enlightened sleep color meaning beauty motivational inspirational questions Richard Dawkins
1542bd3 Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence. existence barriers boundaries questions children Milan Kundera
f1e88e8 Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. daring risk courage seeking uncertainty questions knowledge Anne Rice
1c13506 There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough. strength questions John Green
3cd7955 Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good? choice good-looks cleverness questions L.M. Montgomery
d3dc912 He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer. questions Elie Wiesel
f58458d Questions are great, but only if you know the answers. If you ask questions and the answers surprise you, you look silly. questions Laurell K. Hamilton
628272d Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions. questions Miriam Toews
b7ac111 The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there's not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people inspirational anne frank questions Anne Frank
c5cdbf7 The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself. questions John Fowles
89d05d2 An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy. laughter joy finite questions Madeleine L'Engle
1f74416 "My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers--even the answers they themselves believed. I don't know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined. That is the best of what the old heads meant when they spoke of being "politically conscious"--as much a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty." meaning life certainty questioning questions searching Ta-Nehisi Coates
3f9c401 "Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old, or thereabouts; her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom, but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility, as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touched--by genius, by madness, by the Devil, or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever." (p.33)" madness prayer depression god asymmetry atlantic blind-man blossom left-eye living-things nineteen-years-old power-of-sight clock tree sacraments bones starlight apple wind autumn colors smile questions mirror horror journey eyes Tim Willocks
9c5ed18 How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell. irony questions Christopher Hitchens
f71298b Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be? success questions Mitch Albom
d4d1b98 "Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here." I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question." spirituality questions Rob Bell
a37820c I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers. questions dresden-files Jim Butcher
95e7af9 Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread. questions Lisa Unger
641af4e History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth. history knoweldge proof government questions Howard Zinn
c86d402 We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and efforts stained with tears, of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of shattered glass, a mirror that would, in very truth, reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self. These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed even the stars with passion, and gave to gods the faults and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the winds and waves were music, and all the lakes, and streams, and springs,--the mountains, woods and perfumed dells were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire; made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and home of love; filled Autumns arms with sun-kissed grapes, and gathered sheaves; and pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt, like Lear upon his withered face, Cordelia's tears. These myths, though false, are beautiful, and have for many ages and in countless ways, enriched the heart and kindled thought. But if the world were taught that all these things are true and all inspired of God, and that eternal punishment will be the lot of him who dares deny or doubt, the sweetest myth of all the Fable World would lose its beauty, and become a scorned and hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man. winter perfection shakespeare true grief doubt passion nature joy fear past death dreams music hope life love truth hateful philosophies religion-myths scorn sacred-books brave tender fairy haunted pagan king-lear spring woods fable poetic mountains lake birth smiles deny eternity autumn punishment gods effort tears questions mystery beautiful throne summer thought delight william-shakespeare pleasure Robert G. Ingersoll
6c98896 You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core. humor joking questions wit Kevin Brockmeier
5760264 Where do one's fears come from? Where do they shape themselves? Where do they hide before coming out into the open? philosophy questions Agatha Christie
3fc19f4 But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me. fear questions J.D. Salinger
e61cd45 ... because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it. It's the ones in between that test you. They're the ones that bring questions with them. worth-nothing test questions win Markus Zusak
4b73313 "Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions. There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. You shall not deny the Stranger. They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. death life imperfection utopia questions T.S. Eliot
baabd1e Questions are disturbing, especially those which may threaten our traditions, our institutions, our security. But questions never threaten the living God, who is constantly calling us, and who affirms for us that love is stronger than hate, blessings stronger than cursing. god questions Madeleine L'Engle
1bc73e5 There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete. It is not a foot race, with a finish line.... People will always be waiting at a particular finish line: journalists with their cameras, impatient crowds eager to call the race, astounded to see the scientists approach, pass the mark, and keep running. It's a common misunderstanding, he said. They conclude there was no race. As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing. science journalists scientists questions knowledge Barbara Kingsolver
7ccd24a "When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city ? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?" What will you answer? "We all dwell together To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"? Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions." money community stranger questions T.S. Eliot
70ef7f1 Bigger questions, questions with more than one answer, questions without an answer are the hardest to cope with in silence. Once asked they do not evaporate and leave the mind to its serener musings. Once asked they gain dimension and texture, trip you on the stairs, wake you at night-time. A black hole sucks up its surroundings and even light never escapes. Better then to ask no questions? Better then to be a contented pig than an unhappy Socrates? Since factory farming is tougher on pigs than it is on philosophers I'll take a chance. philosophy questions Jeanette Winterson
01236c2 Are you asking because you really want an answer? questions Haruki Murakami
dcd81aa I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble that I could lie forever on the sofa and keep opening and closing my eyes without knowing the difference. wretched forever questions miserable Franz Kafka
84549a9 ,' it used to be called, even by Jews. 'The Jewish Question.' I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question--as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it--may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flirting with calamity in phrasing things this way, as I learned in school when the Irish question was discussed by some masters as the Irish 'problem.' Again, the word 'solution' can be as neutral as the words 'question' or 'problem,' but once one has defined a people or a nation as such, the search for a resolution can become a yearning for the conclusive. : the final solution. irish-question solutions jewish-question gertrude-stein problems holocaust questions jews Christopher Hitchens
dea9926 It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer to this question. For a long time it seemed to me, as I listened to the gravity and seriousness wherewith Science affirmed its positions on matters unconnected with the problem of life, that I must have misunderstood something. 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. science questions Leo Tolstoy
b185d1d ...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge. religion science scientists questions David Brin
ad029f9 Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life. inspirational-attitude inspirational-life inspirational-quotes life-quotes life-lessons life inspirational imporatance-of-now inspiration-living live-in-present most-important-thing now-quotes power-of-now suggestions what-to-do leo-tolstoy life-experience life-philosophy questions Leo Tolstoy
688e1d1 She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent thought she had revised her position. Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reveal everything in response to a casual question by one who had no right to the information. disclosure lying truth information questions-and-answers facts questions Alexander McCall Smith
219da50 If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being. time solved questions jaws Franz Kafka
2ba9dda Do I dream you? Or you dream me? Or does someone, something bigger than all' - her hands swept the vast constellations above them - 'this beauteous calamity, dream everything we see and more? existentialism questions David Hewson
0ca3b1a All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real questions, those that concern the creator and his creation, have no answers. I'll go even farther and say that there is a level at which only the questions are eternal, the answers never are. And so, the patient that I am, more charitable, repeats: 'Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers. questions Elie Wiesel
c384a57 Who's to say? Life is not, as we are taught, a matter of seeking answers, but rather learning which are the questions we should ask. life questions Kate Mosse
09973a1 Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions...and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them. questions Victor Hugo
d3193b4 What is 'no'? Either you have asked the wrong question or you have asked the wrong person. Find a way to get the 'yes'. yes no questions Jeanette Winterson
b2db060 The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. literature stupidity philosophy czech-literature foolishness questions novel Milan Kundera
b11b793 "Hamlet' dwarfs 'Hamilton' - it dwarfs pretty much everything - but there's a revealing similarity between them. Shakespeare's longest play leaves its audience in the dark about some basic and seemingly crucial facts. It's not as if the Bard forgot, in the course of all those words, to tell us whether Hamlet was crazy or only pretending: He wanted us to wonder. He forces us to work on a puzzle that has no definite answer. And this mysteriousness is one reason why we find the play irresistible. shakespeare musicals plays writing-craft questions Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
5acec87 For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. thoughts mindfulness possibilities perspective zen thinking questions ideas Robert M. Pirsig
8254acb On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it? writer writing novelist purpose questions David Morrell
49af150 "Carter and Helene still ask questions. I used to ask questions, and I got the answer: nothing. The answer is "nothing." play-it-as-it-lays joan-didion nothing questions Joan Didion
1647003 Heisenberg and Bohr and Einstein strike me as being like gifted retriever dogs. Off they go, not just for an afternoon, but for ten years; they come back exhausted and triumphant and drop at your feet... a vole. It's a remarkable thing in its way, a vole--intricate, beautiful really, marvellous. But does it... Does it help? Does it move the matter on? When you ask a question that you'd actually like to know the answer to--what was there before the Big Bang, for instance, or what lies beyond the expanding universe, why does life have this inbuilt absurdity, this non sequitur of death--they say that your question can't be answered, because the terms in which you've put it are logically unsound. What you must do, you see, is ask vole questions. Vole is--as we have agreed--the answer; so it follows that your questions . voles meaning science questions Sebastian Faulks
abb6252 "Tell me, Jeeves," I said. "Suppose you were in a shop taking out of the lending library and a clergyman's daughter came in and without so much as a preliminary 'Hullo, there' said to you, 'Has he brought it yet?' what interpretations would you place on those words?" He pondered, this way and that dividing the swift mind, as I have heard him put it. "'Has he brought it yet,' sir?" "Just that." "I should reach the conclusion that the lady was expecting a male acquaintance to have arrived or to be arriving shortly bearing some unidentified object." -- library jeeves-and-wooster jeeves questions P.G. Wodehouse
11cb837 Ideally, the pursuit of truth is said to be at the heart of the intellectual's business, but this credits his business too much and not quite enough. As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas consummation often turns out to be elusive. Truth captured loses its glamour; truths long known and widely believed have a way of turning false with time; easy truths are bore and too many of them become half truths. Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties. Harold Rosenberg summed up this side of the life of the mind supremely well when he said that the intellectual is one who turns answers into questions. happiness truth playfulness playful intellectual intellectualism intellectuals uncertainty play questions Richard Hofstadter
7a54afa Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet - for me, anyway - all that's worth living for lies in that charm A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are. understanding people sadness life love lonliness self path questions reality-of-life Donna Tartt
215e069 A work of art doesn't need to provide complete answers in order to succeed. It needs only to excite us into asking questions and give us a place to think about them while we become involved in other people's lives. success gay questions writers Christopher Bram
13b379e A few clear pronouncements on one side and a few honest questions on the other had, in a matter of minutes, shown me that life was not going to be as simple, ever again, as I had thought. questions Elisabeth Elliot
34eb50d Florentino Ariza always forgot when he should not have that women, and Prudencia Pitre more than any other, always think about the hidden meanings of questions more than about the questions themselves. women questions Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
d8e9589 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? questions Nicholson Baker
c749720 Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? He had an intuitive feeling, growing rapidly, that what he had stumbled on was no small gimmick. It went far beyond. How far, he didn't know. methodology questions Robert M. Pirsig
2ee20d6 It is really quite impossible to be affirmative about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to remain inarticulate about about anything which one hasn't, by an act of the imagination, made one's own. questions James Baldwin
19d7657 We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means that we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues and thanked God that he was not like other men. christian-artists questions Madeleine L'Engle
a2616ce Even now, I believe that to know how is useless if we do not know why. And there are too many who forbid us to ask. forbidden-knowledge questions-and-answers questions knowledge Robin Wasserman
d30d7e3 Questions can be more dangerous than swords. questions swords Evangeline Walton
aead50f Economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions. freakonomics economics questions Steven D. Levitt
61037ce Questions are for the benefit of every student, not just the one raising his hand. teacher-quotes classroom questioning class teach teacher questions teaching Ann Patchett
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