Questions Quotes

Knowing the right questions is better than knowing all the right answers Caleb from Pretty Little Liars (TV Show) ~ Sara Shepard

Questions permeate every aspect of our world and our life. Life is all about questions. If you stop asking, you stop living. ~ Louis Kahn

How could he mean so much to me in such a short time? ~ E.L. James

It is infinitely harder to ask questions in such a way that the audience is led not to the answers (the province of the demagogue) but to new perceptions. ~ Gore Vidal

Will searching for distant messages work? Is there intelligent life out there? The SETI effort is worth continuing, but our common-sense beacons approach seems more likely to answer those questions. ~ Gregory Benford

Donald Saari uses a combination of stories and questions to challenge students to think critically about calculus. "When I finish this process," he explained, "I want the students to feel like they have invented calculus and that only some accident of birth kept them from beating Newton to the punch." In essence, he provokes them into inventing ways to find the area under the curve, breaking the process into the smallest concepts (not steps) and raising the questions that will Socratically pull them through the most difficult moments. Unlike so many in his discipline, he does not simply perform calculus in front of the students; rather, he raises the questions that will help them reason through the process, to see the nature of the questions and to think about how to answer them. "I want my students to construct their own understanding," he explains, "so they can tell a story about how to solve the problem. ~ Ken Bain

The answers to our questions are everywhere; we just need to change the lens with which we see the world. ~ Janine Benyus

He was very interested in everything that lay to the North because no one ever went that way and he was never allowed to go there himself. When he was sitting out of doors mending the nets, and all alone, he would often look eagerly to the North. One could see nothing but a grassy slope running up to a level ridge and beyond that the sky with perhaps a few birds in it.

Sometimes if Arsheesh was there Shasta would say, 'O my Father, what is there beyond that hill?' And then if the fisherman was in a bad temper he would box Shasta's ears and tell him to attend to his work. Or if he was in a peaceable mood he would say, "O my son, do not allow your mind to be distracted by idle questions. For one of the poets has said, 'Application to business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern them are steering the ship of folly towards the rock of indigence'.

Shasta thought that beyond the hill there must be some delightful secret which his father wished to hide from him. In reality, however, the fisherman talked like this because he didn't know what lay to the North. Neither did he care. He had a very practical mind. ~ C.S. Lewis

So exiled have even basic questions of freedom become from the political vocabulary that they sound musty and ridiculous, and vulnerable to the ultimate badge of shame-'That's so 60's!'-the entire decade having been mocked so effectively that social protest seems outlandish and 'so last century,' just another style excess like love beads and Nehru jackets. No, rebellion won't pose a problem for this social order. ~ Laura Kipnis

Again the important point to remember is that you should keep asking yourself questions. Do not make statements. Ask questions to yourself. The mind hates that. ~ Robert Adams

The cool thing about Watchmen is it has this really complicated question that it asks, which is: who polices the police or who governs the government? Who does God pray to? Those are pretty deep questions but also pretty fun questions. Kind of exciting. It tries to subvert the superhero genre by giving you these big questions, moral questions. Why do you think you're on a fun ride? Suddenly you're like how am I supposed to feel about that? ~ Zack Snyder

the answers lay in flesh and blood, not in a book and not in a report. And so often not even in things corporeal, but in something that couldn't be held and contained and touched. The answers to his questions lay in the murky past and in the emotions hidden there. The ~ Louise Penny

You should ask more questions; it is good for the mind and soul. Questions are doors in the castle of knowledge. Treasure lies behind some, others obscure danger, and behind others lie the various pleasures of life. Every one will earn you knowledge if you are dauntless enough to open them. ~ Luke Alistar

Man did not address his inquiries to the earth on which he stood until a remarkably late stage in the development of his desire for knowledge. And the answers he received to the questions, "Where do I come from?", "What is man?", although they made him poorer by a few illusions, gave him in compensation a knowledge of his past that is vaster than he could ever have dreamed. For it emerged that the history of life was his history too ... ~ Gustav Heinrich Ralph Von Koenigswald

There are mainly four types of living beings: vegetables, parasites, animals and humans. Vegetables go through life without any conscience of what it means to be alive, and all they can do is react to what happens around them and unto them. Parasites take advantage of others beings to survive but cannot survive on their own. In fact, they rather kill their host than to improve themselves independently. Animals are driven by basic instincts, like sex and pleasure for food. Animals can have attachments but that is as far as they go in what concerns love. Now human, they are capable of all that, plus the ability to love on will, to change, help others change, and create any reality they want to experience. However, almost everyone I encounter, is either pretending to be a plant, a parasite or an animal, not a human. Few people know what it means to be human, and that's how the waste their own existence. This said, we wouldn't need to answer questions about life purpose when the purpose is understood in being what one was born to be. ~ Robin Sacredfire

It was a cheap school, you know, and the teachers weren't very good. They could never answer questions properly."
"Very few teachers can," I{Jerry}said.
"Why not? They ought to."
I agreed. ~ Agatha Christie

Sit down and make a list of the answers to these two questions: Ask yourself, if money was no concern and you had all the time and money in the world, what would you do? If you would still do what you currently do, then you are in dharma, because you have passion for what you do ~ Deepak Chopra

Who am I?? No, No you don't ask the questions I ask them my question is how much stupid are you??...You are so quite, why?? You don't have answer, it's not a problem you don't need to answer I kwow it! ~ Deyth Banger

The best answers often come only after we have discovered the correct questions. ~ T Jay Taylor

Listen, I wanted to say, I don't need your judgment, okay? I have enough to deal with without you contributing, so can we just get on with this so I can get out of here?
But I couldn't form the words. Dr. Johnson viewed me as a child, and somehow, under his contemptuous gaze, I had regressed to one. I was frightened and shy, and it was all I could do to answer his questions and count the seconds until the end of the visit. ~ Jessica Verdi

Most Americans - professing Christians - for a fairly long time thought that slavery was simply "where people are these days." Is it really loving to set aside the truth about sin and judgment and even to downplay the person and work of Christ as its answer simply because these are not the questions that are being asked by unbelievers? Imagine our elementary school teachers deciding that they will no longer teach the alphabet because the children aren't interested in learning it. ~ Michael S. Horton

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 will ask questions that are so wide and open they will feel the need to speak for a week. Then from the information that they give to me, I will mould solutions designed specifically for them. ~ Chris Murray

What is at stake is civilization and humanity, nothing less. The idea that everything is permitted, as Nietzsche put it, rests on the premise of nihilism and has nihilistic implications. I will not pretend that the case against nihilism and for civilization is an easy one to make. We are here confronting the most fundamental of philosophical questions, on the deepest levels. In short, the matter of pornography and obscenity is not a trivial one, and only superficial minds can take a bland and untroubled view of it. ~ Irving Kristol

Live to ask. Die to answer. ~ Raheel Farooq

There were so many fewer questions when stars were still just the holes to heaven ... ~ Jack Johnson

Why we ask questions: Questions are the basis of human freedom. Our mind, as a part of our self experience, is curious and always challenging that part of us that can think about the essence of things. We interpret our lives all the time - with unconscious deep conceptualization - and these conceptualization raise questions.
Why did I feel the way I felt yesterday when I spoke with X? What is the meaning of my answer? Why I chose to spend time in X's company and not Y's? And how it changed my attitude toward Y?
(Interesting paragraph I translated from the Hebrew edition) ~ Christopher Bollas

Nobody seriously questions the principle that it is the function of mass culture to maintain public morale, and certainly nobody in the mass audience objects to having his morale maintained. ~ Robert Warshow

Carrying my babies was a marvelous mystery, lives growing unseen except by the slow swelling of my belly. Death is an even greater mystery ... The God I cry out to in anguish or joy can neither be proved nor disapproved. The hope I have that death is not the end of all our questions can neither be proved nor disproved. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I want my audience to ask? ~ Chip Heath

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

I have so many themes I want to explore, so many questions I'd like to raise and develop, and hopefully, I'll get to do just that. ~ Catherine McCormack

I've stopped war reporting. I realized that I'd answered all of my questions about war and about myself. ~ Sebastian Junger

When looking at trends I always ask myself basic and timeless questions about business, and the one I seem to always come back to is, 'How is this different than anything else in the marketplace?' ~ Daymond John

Anyone who says the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imageryYou are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author. ~ Anton Chekhov

Every answer can be followed by another question. ~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

His smile was quizzical and sincere as he said, "Sometimes you feel more like an adversary than a…."

"Than a what?"

"Than a girlfriend, a partner."

I thought about that for a moment, let it roll around in my head, realized - given what I knew about Alex's past - it made quite a lot of sense.

"With a girlfriend you'd need to give away some of your control. But with an adversary, it's all about control."

"Don't." His voice was a growl, and held more than a hint of warning.

"Don't what?"

"Don't start psychoanalyzing me."

"I'm not." I sighed, rubbed my forehead, and removed myself from his lap. I sat down heavily on the couch. "I'm just trying to figure out how to get in your pants without asking you any direct questions. ~ Penny Reid

I am not suggesting that history or scepticism by themselves can provide all the answers to all these questions. History, after all, is not a forward-looking discipline. It can only tell us what happened the last time, not what will happen next time. Similarly, scepticism is hardly sufficient to do anything but ask questions. But together they - history and scepticism - form a potent force for enquiry. ~ Sidin Vadukut

I know the answer to the question now, by the way: why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. It came from my inner editor, the part of me that forces the wordy writer in me to dump ninety percent of all modifiers: Ask both questions again, minus the adjectives.
"Why do things happen to people?"
Just because. ~ Chris Crutcher

We're just like you,' the other tiger said. 'We speak the same language you do. We think the same thought. But we're tigers.'
'You could help me with arithmetic,' I said.
'What's that?' one of the tigers said.
'My arithmetic.'
'Oh, your arithmetic.'
'Yeah.'
'What do you want to know?' one of the tigers said.
'What's nine times nine?'
'Eighty-one,' a tiger said.
'What's eight times eight?'
'Fifty-six,' a tiger said.
I asked them half of dozen other questions: six times six, seven times four, etc. I was having a lot of trouble with arithmetic. Finally the tigers got bored with my questions and told me to go away.
'OK,' I said. 'I'll go outside.'
'Don't go too far,' one of the tigers said. 'We don't want anyone to come up here and kill us.'
'OK.'
They both went back to eating my parents. I went outside and sat down by the river. 'I'm an orphan,' I said. ~ Richard Brautigan

I thought you didn't drink coffee," I said to Ranger. "What about your body being a temple?"
He sipped at the coffee. "It's my disguise. It goes with the haircut."
"Will you let your hair grow back?"
"Probably."
"And then you'll stop drinking coffee?"
"You ask a lot of questions," Ranger said.
"Just trying to figure this out. ~ Janet Evanovich

Because if you grow up to be the kind of person who asks questions about who you are, why things are the way they are, and what we could do to make them better, then you still have hope for this world, and if you still have hope, my love, then so do I. ~ Mira Jacob

You have to make a choice to either let the questions that are haunting you make you a better person or haunt you for the rest of your life. If you chose to let them haunt you, then guess what? It's not going to change the situation because you still won't have the answers to those questions. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

The other cops were almost evenly divided between being scared by what they'd seen and being so impressed that it was almost worse, because I wasn't sure what they'd expect me to be able to do next time. Aimes hadn't been the only one who saw the white-shadowed outline of wings. I told them it was an answer to prayer, not me personally. I finally told one overly solicitous uniform, 'Trust me, I'm no angel.'
Nicky started laughing and couldn't seem to stop.
'Yuk it up, lion boy.'
That made him laugh harder, until he had to lean against the wall with tears trailing down from his eye. At least his laughing stopped any more weird theological questions; they just couldn't seem to talk about angels with this big, muscled bad-ass guy laughing his ass off beside me. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, 'What is the answer?' Then, after a long silence, 'What is the question?' Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks. ~ Frederick Buechner

Every damn one of us has faults. I feel like I was dealt an especially crummy hand."

"It got ugly. I became a man possessed by inner demons that could not be caged. I was desperate for answers that were never forthcoming. Jen avoided me like the plague. She was ever fearful of the questions that I refused to voice. All of my answers poured forth deliciously from the bottle. ~ Virginia Aird

If the general picture of an expanding universe and a Big Bang is correct, we must then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big Bang? What happened before that? Was there a tiny universe, devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly created from nothing? How does that happen? In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? ~ Carl Sagan

To understand how my father became the way he was, I had to learn what happened to him as a little boy. It took a long time to learn the right questions to ask. ~ Thi Bui

It's one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child... 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' As if growing up is finite. As if, at some point, you become something and that's the end. ~ Michelle Obama

It's always easier to ask questions than provide answers. Journalists - and revolutionaries, I assume - know it only too well. ~ Sudeep Chakravarti

Enjoy the questions because they open many doors. Forget the answers because they always change. ~ Paulo Coelho

Questions arise for self-reflection: "Is it really all that money that I want, or is it the glamour that I have attached to it? What is it that I want from that job title or from that designation of "Dr." and "Esq." and "Rev."? Is it the responsibility and activities that go along with it, or is it the glamour and esteem associated with it? Do I really love that person, or am I in love with the glamour I have projected onto him or her?" The more we let go, the more we de-glamorize the world. The more it is de-glamorized, the less it runs us. ~ David R. Hawkins

The question becomes, because we're remotely far away from the territory we're about to bomb, does it make it easier to do it? That it is an important question, and the military is asking those questions. ~ Gavin Hood

I started asking the big questions that I had asked in college, that my compatriots the Greek philosophers had asked, like 'what is a good life?' Socrates famously said that 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' I started asking these questions from the starting point of 'what is success?' ~ Arianna Huffington

The years of disillusion, the long debate of who-belongs-to-who, gathered at the mighty feet of the Bangladesh Liberation War like flood waters rising, gathering thick weeds and crusty dirt and pulling it all in one direction. At times, when the body count was high and the air tasted like bloody ash, the way mass graves smell, Sariyah had wondered what progress was supposed to taste like. Often it tasted like unanswered questions, stuck in the teeth. Bangladesh had given her the true answer, though: progress at its best is home-grown. It should taste like joy – pure, unhindered joy. Like the freshest sun-ripened mango on a tree, a little sunrise in her palm. ~ Katherine Russell

This your brain. This is your brain on Facebook. Any questions? ~ James Patrick Kelly

Once they have you asking the wrong questions. They don't have to worry about the answers. ~ Thomas Pynchon

The truth is that in our lives we are all going to encounter questions that should be answered, that deserve to be answered, and yet prove unanswerable. ~ John Green

Ask the right questions, and the answers will always reveal themselves ~ Oprah Winfrey

To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions. ~ Michael Sandel

The most profound questions are best explored through fiction. ~ Paul Kieniewicz

It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions. ~ Jill Shalvis

I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I'm not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to. ~ Twyla Tharp

[I]f the policy of the Government, upon vital questions affecting, the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their Government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal. ~ Abraham Lincoln

To be or not to be! Hamlet!! I beg to differ! How much more limiting could that question be? How much more restraining could it ever get? Do we only have two possible answers to a question? Do we only have two things to choose from? Are our options so restricted? Are we so grounded? Have we gone color blind? When did our retinas stop seeing the colors of a rainbow? Why do we print our experiences in duotone? In a game of multiple choice questions, how many answers could be correct? What number of choices do we have? Who gives us the options? When do we have to submit our selections? Who decides if we passed or failed? ~ Marwa Rakha

Make it quick," I said when I picked up.
"Okay. Two men from the FBI are here." Cookie said. Quickly.
Crap. "Men in black are at the office?"
"Well, yes, but they're actually in more of a navy."
Crapola. I so don't have time for men. In any color. "Okay, two questions. Do they look mad, and are they hot?"
After a long, long, pause, Cookie said, "One, not really. Two, no comment at this time. And three, you're on speakerphone."
After another long, long pause, I said, "Okie dokie then. Be there in a jiff. ~ Darynda Jones

The answers are easy if you have the right questions. ~ Haresh Sippy

The world's questions cannot be simply solved with just one equation. ~ Gabriella Jording

The E-Meter, short for "electropsychometer," is an "electronic instrument that measures mental state and change of state in individuals," according to the church. During the process, the preclear, or PC (person getting the auditing), is asked a set of questions or given directions as he holds on to two empty "cans" hooked up to the meter. It is believed that the thoughts in a person's mind affect the flow of energy between the cans and cause the needle on the dial to move. ~ Leah Remini

Don't write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions. ~ Lucille Clifton

God of the gaps" Christianity seeks to present Christianity as playing a strong savior role whereby it fills the gaps and provides the missing links for all of society's questions and concerns. This entails the view of God riding into town and miraculously saving the day (deus ex machina). On this view, God delivers his people from their (and his) enemies - in Bonhoeffer's case, the Nazis. In contrast, in Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer writes that God allows us to push him out of the world and onto the cross. ~ Paul Louis Metzger

Waking to the sound of the bells for third-gold, I found myself staring up at a pair of interested brown eyes.
"She's awake!" my watcher called over her shoulder. Then she turned back to me and grinned. She had a pointed face, curly dark hair escaping from two short braids, and a merry voice as she said, "Splat!" She clapped her hands lightly. "We were fair guffered when you toppled right off Drith, facedown in the chickenyard mud. Lucky it was so early, for no one was about but us."
I winced.
She grinned again. "You're either the worst horse thief in the entire kingdom, or else you're that missing countess. Which is it?"
"Ara." The voice of quiet reproach came from the doorway.
I lifted my eyes without moving my head, saw a matron of pleasant demeanor and comfortable build come into the room bearing a tray.
Ara jumped up. She seemed a couple years younger than I. "Let me!"
"Only if you promise not to pester her with questions," the mother replied. "She's still much too ill."
Ara shrugged, looking unrepentant. "But I'm dying to know."
The mother set the tray down on a side table and smiled down at me. She had the same brown eyes as her daughter, but hers were harder to read. "Can you sit up yet?"
"I can try," I said hoarsely.
"Just high enough so's we can put these pillows behind you." Ara spoke over her shoulder as she dashed across the room.
My head ached just to watch her, and I closed my eyes again.
"Ara."Sherwood Smith