Hard Questions Quotes

To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless ... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival. ~ Audre Lorde

To truly live without regrets, pay attention. Ask yourself hard questions and see where they lead. Do I really want this job? Is this relationship right for me? If I could do anything, would it be what I'm doing today ... or something different? ~ Chris Guillebeau

North Star: There's much more happiness to be had. Also clarity, energy, and fun. But doing this work is a necessary part of the process. It doesn't happen fast. It takes answering hard questions, time, and perhaps a trained ally. ~ Helen S. Rosenau

We are afraid to face the hard questions. We are willing to tackle drugs, crime, and public education only if it doesn't cost us any new taxes. ~ J. Irwin Miller

She glared at him. "Why are you forever asking hard questions?"
He smiled. "Sooner or later you'll have to be able to answer one."
Daja shoved him, grinning. ~ Tamora Pierce

Ask hard questions to yourself, for yourself. Keep your happiness on toes. Let it refine itself. ~ Ashutosh Gupta

That first week, I also went to Washington. That was really tough. I sympathize with those Washington figures who have to face 40 Times Washington bureau reporters. They ask hard questions and they're relentless. And they were quite suspicious and quite dubious about me. ~ Daniel Okrent

The intellectual equipment needed for the job of the future is an ability to define problems, quickly assimilate relevant data, conceptualize and reorganize the information, make deductive and inductive leaps with it, ask hard questions about it, discuss findings with colleagues, work collaboratively to find solutions and then convince others. ~ Robert Reich

Laying down a challenge means more than directing people to do it. It includes asking the hard questions that no one yet has the answers to and then backing off so that the people within the organization have the space to think through the questions, take ownership, and find the answers. ~ Liz Wiseman

I have to look at our staff and ask the hard question - Would I hire them again? ~ Jeff Henderson

We turned out to be good for each other. For a stitch of time all the hard questions went away and hid in dark places. ~ Lawrence Block

I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley
in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered
or simply to sit here and do nothing?'
That is a hard question,' said Candide. ~ Voltaire

Can you truly love anyone if you do not first love yourself? If you hate yourself, can you love anyone else? If you do not accept all of who you are, can you accept anyone else? Hard questions. It remains to be seen whether I get any answers, hard, or otherwise. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

Face the hard questions that life requires you to ask. Gather with other travelers on the narrow road, pilgrims who acknowledge their confusion and feel their fears. Then, together, live those questions in My Presence. ~ Larry Crabb

You know, the truth isn't hard to find, if you're willing to get your hands dirty. Truth waits just under the surface for any man brave enough to scrape a little dirt away. But most people are too afraid or too lazy to get dirty. They're afraid to ask the right questions. The hard questions. ~ Greg Iles

Once, before I had you, I saw you. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. I was pregnant and standing alone outside a party, and when you kicked, I shut my eyes and saw you on a beach we would arrive at almost five years later. You were facing the water and wearing your blue swimsuit and I knew, from the curve in your spine and the nut brown of your skin, that you were mine to protect like nothing else ever will be.
So when you first started asking me hard questions, the ones about America and your place here, I wanted to find you the right answers - the kind that would make you feel good, welcome, and loved. I thought if I could just remember the country I'd been raised to believe in, the one I was sure I would eventually get to, I'd be able to get us back there.
Here is the thing, though, the real, true thing I still have trouble admitting: I can't protect you from everything. I can't protect you from becoming a brown man in America. I can't protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can't even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn't.
Even now, just writing that down, I want to say something that will make it okay, or even make it make sense, but I can't. Will they ever really understand it themselves? Will they ever change? I have no idea. Our burden is how much we might love them anyway.

And this ~ Mira Jacob

There exits within the ecclesia and among its citizens a phenomena I refer to as 'Spiritual Correctness'. Essentially it says: 'Don't say anything that could offend anyone, focus on what is right with the 'church' and its leadership, don't be critical, speak the truth in 'love', promote the status quo, don't make 'waves', don't call anyone 'out', respect 'authority', don't expose 'wrong-doing', cover those who 'spiritually abuse' others, keep it 'secret' within our family; don't ask any hard questions. Sounds exactly like the textbook definition of a highly dysfunctional family system. The only 'system' and its enablers that Jesus spoke out against vehemently was the religious system of His day and its leadership."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

This is a major, wide-ranging, and comprehensive book. A philosophical investigation that is also a literary and historical study, Truth and Truthfulness asks how and why we have come to think of accuracy, sincerity, and authenticity as virtues. Bernard Williams' account of their emergence is as detailed and imaginative as his defense of their importance is spirited and provocative. Williams asks hard questions, and gives them straightforward and controversial answers. His book does not simply describe and advocate these virtues of truthfulness; it manifests them. ~ Alexander Nehamas

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can't deal with them ... But it's a complicated matter: Science studies what's at the edge of understanding, and what's at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated. ~ Noam Chomsky

If you want to create something that's worth doing you have to self-edit from the get-go. You really must be careful and selective with whom you work, you must constantly ask yourself the hard questions about your art, and you must set a nearly unattainable standard for yourself. ~ John Dyer Baizley

We feel pain as an outrage; Jesus did too, which is why he performed miracles of healing. In Gethsemane, he did not pray, "Thank you for this opportunity to suffer," but rather pled desperately for an escape. And yet he was willing to undergo suffering in service of a higher goal. In the end he left the hard questions ("if there be any other way ... ") to the will of the Father, and trusted that God could use even the outrage of his death for good. ~ Philip Yancey

I think about Rilke, who said that it's the questions that move us, not the answers. As a writer I believe it is our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustices that we see and to create a prayer of beauty. The questions serve us in that capacity. Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.

... I write out of my questions. Hopefully, if we write out of our humanity, our vulnerable nature, then some chord is struck with a reader and we touch on the page. I know that is why I read, to find those parts of myself in a story that I cannot turn away from. The writers who move me are the ones who create beauty and truth out of their sufferings, their yearnings, their discoveries. It is what I call the patience of words born out of the search.

... Perhaps as writers we are really storytellers, finding that golden thread that connects us to the past, present, and future at once. I love language and landscape. For me, writing is the correspondence between these two passions. It is difficult to ever see yourself. I don't know how I've developed or grown as a writer. I hope I am continuing to take risks on the page. I hope I am continuing to ask the hard questions of myself. If we are attentive to the world and to those around us, I believe we will be attentive on the page. Writing is about presen ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Black power is organizing the rage of Black people and putting new hard questions and demands to white America. ~ Charles Hamilton Houston

Math people are math people. When you approach them with investments and business, they don't just ask the soft questions but eventually get to the hard questions. ~ Paul Wachter

YOU HAVE TO ASK HARD QUESTIONS. ~ Tony Kushner

I do not know the answers to life's hard questions, but I do know the One who knows them and that's sufficient ... for now. ~ Toni Sorenson

While we advance exponentially in technological capability, our spiritual or 'biological technology,' our maturity as a species, is still two or three thousand years in the past. This is because many of us live according to ideas that were original and groundbreaking ... in 500 B.C. Most people are unwilling or unable to ask the hard questions- as in, why do we do things the way we do, and what will the end results be? (p.120) Generation Hex ~ James Curcio

This is a hard question. But as women we have a right to ask the hard questions. The only way I have ever understood, broken free, emerged, healed, forgiven, flourished, and grown powerful is by asking the hardest questions and then living into the answers through opening up to my own terror and transmuting it into creativity. I have gotten nowhere by retreating into hand-me-down sureties or resisting the tensions that truth ignited. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

People who won't sign the taxpayer protection pledge, people who won't sign the property-rights protection pledge, people who won't sign the state-sovereignty pledge, who won't put their beliefs in writing, who won't endorse the Freedom Agenda, we should be asking them some very very hard questions. Very hard questions. Because you know what, they get away with it. We hear what goes on in closed doors in Olympia. We hear them say the opposite of what they say publicly. ~ Matt Shea

Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology. ~ Vinod Khosla

Dreams won't always take you on a straight path to destiny but they're usually related to what your soul wants for you. They'll force you to ask yourself the hard questions, they'll kick your ass and more importantly, they'll turn you on. ~ Kelly Cutrone

Journalists are accused of being lapdogs when they don't ask the hard questions, but then accused of being rude when they do. Good thing we have tough hides. ~ Gwen Ifill

I did not know that children think the hard questions they ask are easy and thus expect easy answers to them, and that they are disappointed when they get cautious, complex answers. ~ Bernhard Schlink

I don't really know what the dream role would be. That's a hard question to answer. You never really know, until you're immersed into something, how passionate you feel for it and how it unravels. ~ Aaron Taylor-Johnson

It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321. ~ Anthony Burgess

We consume so we never have to answer the hard questions. When we are bored we eat. When we are lonely we watch a movie, read the newspaper, jump on social media. Each time we do we cover up our real emotions and keep throwing another layer of confusion and anxiety on top, making it almost impossible to dig ourselves out of the hole, or at least see which way is up. ~ Evan Sutter

Self-awareness involves deep personal honesty. It comes from asking and answering hard questions. ~ Stephen Covey

The mind of man has perplexed itself with many hard questions. Is space infinite, and in what sense? Is the material world infinite in extent, and are all places within that extent equally full of matter? Do atoms exist or is matter infinitely divisible? ~ James C. Maxwell

Creating a relatable narrative means digging deep, asking hard questions and potentially airing some uncomfortable truths. ~ Tobin Trevarthen

I always think the novelist should go to the culture's dark places and poke around. Pose a lot of hard questions. ~ Dana Spiotta

When I had my confirmation hearing for the Court of Appeals, [my son] Philip was 3 years old. And when I was called up to the chair he took it upon himself to run up and sit next to me in case any hard questions came up. ~ Samuel Alito

As often as I feel certain that God exists, I feel as often at a loss to say what difference it makes
that He exists
or even; that to believe in God, which I do, raises more questions than it presents answers. Thus, when I am feeling my most faithful, I also feel full of a few hard questions that I would like to put to God
I mean,critical questions of the How-Can-He, How-Could-He, How-Dare-You variety." But don't let this religious "stuff" turn you off. This is fiction, pure and simple. He just brings out some great thoughts on the way. ~ John Irving

It is difficult to ever see yourself. I don't know how I've developed or grown as a writer. I hope I am continuing to take risks on the page. I hope I am continuing to ask the hard questions of myself. If we are attentive to the world and to those around us, I believe we will be attentive on the page. Writing is about presence. I want to be fully present wherever I am, alive to the pulse just beneath the skin. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.
And I was satisfied. More than satisfied
wonderfully at peace. There were answers to mmy hard questions
for now, I was content to leave them in my father's keeping. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

Strange sometimes how easy bitter words came, how hard the kind ones. ~ Winston Graham

Perhaps when we die our names are taken
from us by a divine magnet and are free
to flutter here and there within the bodies of birds.
I'll be a simple crow
who can reach the top of Antelope Butte.
(From: Hard Times) ~ Jim Harrison

They, especially, taught me that you can't go through life not liking people because they didn't have to work as hard or come as far as you did. ~ Rick Bragg

Oliver reached past her to yank the curtains closed, then moved to sit beside her. She stiffened, but didn't resist as he looped one arm about her waist to pull her back against his hard body.
"You don't even know what you're giving up," he rasped, "what it's like to shatter beneath a man's touch. If you knew, you wouldn't be so eager to throw that away for the cold comfort of a respectable marriage."
She closed her eyes against his words, but they were designed to tempt her, and tempt her they did. Last night had only roused her curiosity. Now, with the spicy scent of his cologne in her nostrils and his breath warming her cheek, she wanted to know more, feel more.
His voice lowered to a whisper. "Let me at least show you what you'd be missing."
She felt rather than saw him shrug off his cloak, leaving him in his shirtsleeves. That sent a wayward thrill down her spine.
"Have you forgotten that I'm deplorably a virgin?" she said, attempting to regain control over the situation.
"No. And you'll still be one when I'm done." He pressed his lips against the bit of neck below her bonnet, making her shiver deliciously. Then he untied her bonnet and tossed it onto the opposite seat so he could press a kiss into her hair. "I only want to give you a taste of passion, sweetheart. Enough for you to see what it could be like between us."
"Oliver…" she protested, turning toward him.
That proved a mistake, for he caught her head in his hands and kiss ~ Sabrina Jeffries

It's a long hard road ahead for you, little warrior. Enjoy a happy day while you can. - Boldred ~ Brian Jacques

Some days I'm up for the challenge.
Some days I need to catch my breath.
But it's a long story we're writing.
Even on the days when it's hard, I know that someday it will be better. ~ David Levithan

I have no interest in anything so frivolous as the bona fide religion or mankind's pathetic debate over whose version of the church is correct. Circular arguments over the semantics of faith hold no interest for me. Those are questions answered only through death! ~ M.ralte

I had a reporter ask me how much I weigh. I said to him, 'You go first: How much do you weigh?' People always ask me what I eat. Other artists don't get asked these questions. ~ Meghan Trainor

I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard. ~ Lyle Lovett

And Preacher, the notorious thinks with his dick man, he was all the bad decisions a woman could ever make and a lifetime of regret all wrapped up in a six foot six rock hard package. ~ V. Theia

Sometimes quiet is violent
I find it hard to hide it
My pride is no longer inside
It's on my sleeve
My skin will scream reminding me of
Who I killed inside my dream
I hate this car that I'm driving
There's no hiding for me
I'm forced to deal with what I feel
There is no distraction to mask what is real
I could pull the steering wheel ~ Twenty One Pilots

The remoteness of my parents from the schools, so unfashionable today, was often painful for me, but I learned early to deal with an outside and sometimes hard world. ~ Martin Lewis Perl

I suppose that someday, suddenly, I will be transferred to another age, for example the chivalric or the bronze. The hope is, of course, that I arrive in period dress but not resemble a contemporary luminary, for I wish to simply onlook. But, more probably, thanks to chronologically garbled garb, or my mistakable face - which will lead to expectations of competence - I will have to explain my occurrence. That explained, I will have to explain my age, The Present, also known as "The Future" in the past. This is why I am studying our great inventions and advances: to be ready for questions. ~ Amy Leach

I try to be the best I can be at what I can do, and that's playing hard & rebounding. ~ Tristan Thompson

The industry had realized you could create the impression of controversy simply by asking questions ~ Naomi Oreskes

The two women look at each other and in both faces there is a glimpse of the girls that they were. A little smile warms Margaret's face and Jacquetta's eyes are filled with love. It is as if the years are no more than the mists of Barnet or the snows at Towton: they are gone, it is hard to believe they were ever there. Margaret puts out her hand, not to touch her friend but to make a gesture, a secret shared gesture, and, as we watch, Jacquetta mirrors the movement. Eyes fixed on each other they both raise their index finger and trace a circle in the air – that's all they do. Then they smile to each other as if life itself is a joke, a jest that means nothing and a wise woman can laugh at it; then, without a word, Margaret passes silently into the darkness of the tower.

'What was that?' Isabel exclaims.

'It was the sign for the wheel of fortune,' I whisper. 'The wheel of fortune which put Margaret of Anjou on the throne of England, heiress to the kingdoms of Europe, and then threw her down to this. Jacquetta warned her of this long ago – they knew. The two of them knew long ago that fortune throws you up to greatness and down to disaster and all you can do is endure. ~ Philippa Gregory

I'm trying to fight typecasting as hard as I can, while I have time. ~ Famke Janssen

Yea, kinda hard to be mad when he says shit like that. ~ Maya Banks

He heard Tamara scream his name, and Jasper yell, "We're supposed to stay here," but Call didn't slow. He was going to be the apprentice that Aaron thought he was, the one who there was nothing wrong with. He was going to do the kind of things that got you mysterious heroic achievements on your wristband. He was going to throw himself right into the fray.
He tripped over a loose stone, fell, and rolled to the bottom of the hill, banging his elbow hard on a tree root. Okay, he thought, not the best start. ~ Cassandra Clare

It is, after all, hard to know what to choose when you aren't really sure what you want. ~ William B. Irvine

The truth is when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I was certainly the least smart, or less educated. But I worked very hard. ~ Mary Karr

There's only a very small representation of girls among you. Too little. Women have much to tell us in today's society. Sometimes we are too machistas and we don't allow enough space to women. But women can see things from a different angle to us, with a different eye. Women are able to pose questions we men are unable to understand. Look out for this fact: she is the only one who has put a question for which there is no answer. She couldn't put it into words but expressed it with tears. ~ Pope Francis

How hard it is to hate a person you've once loved. ~ Chantel Acevedo

You're way too hard on yourself. This analysis and thinking and plotting and figuring out, it's stopping you from living your life, ~ Mary H.K. Choi

There were times when he'd told her that every star was a bit of gold that was hers for the taking, because she was Chinese and with hard work and attendance to her ancestiors and traditions, she would prosper. And now, here they were under a blanket of gold dust, the Milky Way spread over them like some great shifting blanket, the stars so thick that if he were tall enough he could reach up and squeeze them and have them run down his arms.
Gold, all around, and all of it untouchable. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Love is the total absence of fear. Love asks no questions. Its natural state is one of extension and expansion, not comparison and measurement. ~ Gerald Jampolsky

Dan had some questions about Chris-R. We all did. Why the name "Chris-R," for instance? What's with that hyphen? Tommy's explanation: "He is gangster." What about this drug business, which never comes up either before or after Chris-R's only scene in the film? "We have big problem in society with the drugs. ~ Greg Sestero

I'm constantly maxing out my Gmail account, and that is hard to do. ~ Rachel Sklar

The respect for human rights is nowadays not so much a matter of having international standards, but rather questions of compliance with those standards. ~ Michelle Bachelet

Strange questions are the more interesting ones. Children by and large don't try to trip you up ... they want to find out how you do this funny thing that you do ... if they've loved a story they love to know how it started. ~ Michael Morpurgo

You can get stuck in being wise. You can get stuck in having a developed will. It is very hard to get stuck in being happy. It is too lucid a state of mind. ~ Frederick Lenz

I have felt things that no one should ever have to feel.

I have seen things that no one should ever have to see.

I have heard things that no one should ever have to hear.

I have been beaten down so many times that It is reflexive to get back up immediately without any hesitation expecting another whack to come instantaneously.

I have got up off the mat more times than what should be necessary.

I know I will need to continue doing so many, many more times.

I am prepared to do so and more without complaint or regret.

It is outright exhausting.

I keep experiencing this pain because 1 life is worth it.

Life is awesome and is worth fighting for. Even 1 life is worth it.

For 1 life to experience life is my mission.

To quote JFK:
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

So I will continue to feel, see and hear things that no parent should ever have to in order for 1 life to be able to experience this awesome life again. ~ JohnA Passaro

It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Love breaks your heart, love takes no less than everything. Love makes it hard, and it fades away so easily. ~ Vanessa L. Williams

It is hard, she thought, it is hard for us to think of people who dislike us because none of us, in our heart, believes that we deserve the hatred of others. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

... my mother reached over and laid her hand on my arm, saying that was true, ... and I felt something twist in me, the motion of some unthinking thing when it is gripped too hard, and I had to resist the urge to pull away. ~ Garth Greenwell

The first time we did cavalry charge I was so breathless with excitement I nearly fell off the horse. I actually saw stars in front of my eyes and thought I was going to faint. The second time I had a bit more control but was still giddy with excitement. And the third time I was an emotional wreck. I had to really try hard not to cry. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch