Rhetorical Questions Quotes

A rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer. ~ Mark Haddon

Women are good at rhetorical questions, aren't they? ~ Stephen King

Not all of Derrida's writing is to everyone's taste. He had an irritating habit of overusing the rhetorical question, which lends itself easily to parody: 'What is it, to speak? How can I even speak of this? Who is this "I" who speaks of speaking? ~ Terry Eagleton

Whoop-de-do," said Ram.
"What?"
"I'm celebrating."
"Was that irony or loss of mental function?" asked the expendable.
"Was that a rhetorical questions, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?"
"I have no confidence in you, Ram," said the expendable.
"Well, thanks."
"You're welcome. ~ Orson Scott Card

There is usually a time in life when one wakes up wondering where life is leading, the future still a rushing brace of questions and ambition and opportunity. lately for Matthew, waking up feels like one thousand rhetorical questions asked without urgency, in sleepy disbelief. The one currently wedged into the head like something parasitic with spiny little fins or teeth to anchor in with is this: Am I living in a Goddam Steely Dan song? ~ Dan Kennedy

Half the time I have no idea what I'm doing. The other half, I'm trying to undo what I did when I didn't know what I was doing. That leaves, let's see now ... one more half. That last half is divided into three halves, one for working, one for writing, and one for asking the mother of all rhetorical questions ... WTF? ~ Suki Michelle

Can I ask you a personal question? Of all the rhetorical questions
in the world, that is the one which irritates me most with its
simultaneous gesture towards and denial of the trespass that is about
to follow. ~ Kamila Shamsie

For the Gypsy, it's moments in time that count, not interpretations or rhetorical questions or resolutions or justifications, and not even the journey's end, for the journey never ends. Just moments in time. They are born for disappearing ~ Karl Wiggins

You want to kiss her, right?"

"What?" I have lost track of our conversation. I was thinking about how if Kit called me her friend, then I would have multiplied my number of them by a factor of two. And then I considered the word flirting, how it sounds like fluttering, which is what butterflies do. Which of course looped me back to chaos theory and my realization that I'd like to have more information to provide Kit on the topic.

"Do. You. Want. To. Kiss. Her?" Miney asks again.

"Yes, of course I do. Who wouldn't want to kiss Kit?"

"I don't want to kiss Kit," Miney says, doing that thing where she imitates me and how I answer rhetorical questions. Though her intention is to mock rather than to educate, it's actually been a rather informative technique to demonstrate my tendency toward taking people too literally. "Mom doesn't want to kiss Kit. I don't know about Dad, but I doubt it."

My father doesn't look up. His face is buried in a book about the mating patterns of migratory birds. It's too bad our scholarly interests have never overlapped. Breakfast would be so much more interesting if we could discuss our work.

"So if you want to kiss Kit, that means you want her to see you like a real guy," Miney says, and points at me with her cup of coffee. She's drinking it black. Maybe there's nothing wrong with Miney. Maybe she's just tired.

"I am a real guy." How come even my own sister sees me as somethin ~ Julie Buxbaum

Ut mos totus rhetoricus problemati terminus?
(When will all the rhetorical questions end?) ~ Mike Thomas

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:
(1) Avoid alliteration. Always
(2) Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
(3) Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)
(4) Employ the vernacular.
(5) Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
(6) Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
(7) It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
(8) Contractions aren't necessary.
(9) Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
(10) One should never generalize.
(11) Eliminate quotations. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
(12) Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
(13) Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
(14) Profanity sucks.
(15) Be more or less specific.
(16) Understatement is always best.
(17) Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
(18) One-word sentences? Eliminate.
(19) Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
(20) The passive voice is to be avoided.
(21) Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
(22) Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
(23) Who needs rhetorical questions? ~ Frank L. Visco

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world? ~ Christopher Hitchens

If my mother's intention in whole or in part was to ensure that I never had to suffer any indignity or embarrassment for being a Jew, then she succeeded well enough. And in any case there were enough intermarriages and 'conversions' on both sides of her line to make me one of those many mischling hybrids who are to be found distributed all over the known world. And, as someone who doesn't really believe that the human species is subdivided by 'race,' let alone that a nation or nationality can be defined by its religion, why should I not let the whole question slide away from me? Why - and then I'll stop asking rhetorical questions - did I at some point resolve that, in whatever tone of voice I was asked 'Are you a Jew?' I would never hear myself deny it? ~ Christopher Hitchens

I had escaped from my prior partisan mind-set (reject first, ask rhetorical questions later) and began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society.28 ~ Jonathan Haidt

Are you threatening me?"
"I don't like rhetorical questions. ~ Suzanne Wright

And suddenly they came out of the woodwork. I don't actually know what that expression means. What come out of the wood work? Cockroaches maybe. Mice? Are these rhetorical questions, like I just learned about on one of my rare visits to school? Was that a rhetorical question? Is it a paradox when you ask rhetorically if a rhetorical question is a rhetorical question? I think I'd better stop before I get a headache. ~ John Marsden

More often than not, these attempts at sociability ended in painful silence. His old friends, who remembered him as a brilliant student and wickedly funny conversationalist, were appalled by what had happened to him. Tom had slipped from the ranks of the anointed, and his downfall seemed to shake their confidence in themselves, to open the door onto a new pessimism about their own prospects in life. It didn't help matters that Tom had gained weight, that his former plumpness now verged on an embarrassing rotundity, but even more disturbing was the fact that he didn't seem to have any plans, that he never spoke about how he was going to undo the damage he'd done to himself and get back on his feet. Whenever he mentioned his new job, he described it in odd, almost religious terms, speculating on such questions as spiritual strength and the importance of finding one's path through patience and humility, and this confused them and made them fidget in their chairs. Tom's intelligence had not been dulled by the job, but no one wanted to hear what he had to say anymore, least of all the women he talked to, who expected young men to be full of brave ideas and clever schemes about how they were going to conquer the world. Tom put them off with his doubts and soul-searchings, his obscure disquisitions on the nature of reality, his hesitant manner. It was bad enough that he drove a taxi for a living, but a philosophical taxi driver who dressed in army-navy clothes and carried a paunch a ~ Paul Auster

Nothing stands still. The real question is can you change it? ~ Jamie Zawinski

If you live the questions, life will move you into answers. ~ Deepak Chopra

They stood locked together for the space of a few breaths. He frantically tried to triage his concerns but only came up with questions.
"How can you be a water dragon? They were all killed."
"Apparently not." Her smile was grim. ~ Susannah Scott

I bent my head and breathed the fresh new scent of her. I looked into her deep blue eyes and saw reflected there the dawn of my own new life. This little girl seemed to me, at that moment, answer enough to all my questions. To have saved this small, singular one - this alone seemed reason enough that I lived. I knew then that this was how I was meant to go on: away from death and toward life, from birth to birth, from seed to blossom, living my life amongst wonders. ~ Geraldine Brooks

Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren't easy questions. ~ Bill Gates

A company finds its destiny by answering three questions: 'Who are we?,' 'What do we stand for?,' and 'How do we serve?,' ~ Tom Chappell

Ask open ended questions. Pull out the pain and the hurt your prospect is experiencing. ~ Timi Nadela

We spent some time like that, me asking small questions, Toby giving me longer and longer answers, until we were simply talking, Toby asking me questions, too. ~ Lauren Wolk

I had requested all who might find aught meriting censure in my writings, to do me the favor of pointing it out to me, I may state that no objections worthy of remark have been alleged against what I then said on these questions except two, to which I will here briefly reply. ~ Thomas Hobbes

It is not enough for the skeptic, then, to simply dismiss the Christian teaching about the resurrection of Jesus by saying, "It just couldn't have happened." He or she must face and answer all these historical questions: Why did Christianity emerge so rapidly, with such power? No other band of messianic followers in that era concluded their leader was raised from the dead - why did this group do so? No group of Jews ever worshipped a human being as God. What led them to do it? Jews did not believe in divine men or individual resurrections. What changed their worldview virtually overnight? How do you account for the hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrection who lived on for decades and publicly maintained their testimony, eventually giving their lives for their belief? ~ Timothy Keller

Members of trusting teams accept questions and input about their areas or responsibility, appreciate and tap into one another's skills and experiences, and look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group. ~ Patrick Lencioni

Mum looks hesitant. As mums get when they are accustomed to being able to predict their daughters' questions, and then suddenly find they were wrong about that. Elsa shrugs. ~ Fredrik Backman

No, he mustn't think about it, or indeed about anything, and especially not about heroin, because heroin was the one thing that really worked, the only thing that stopped him scampering around in a hamster's wheel of unanswerable questions. Heroin was the cavalry. Heroin was the missing chair leg, made with such precision that it matched every splinter of the break. Heroin landed purring at the base of his skull, and wrapped itself darkly around his nervous system, like a black cat curling up on its favourite cushion. It was as soft and rich as the throat of a wood pigeon, or the splash of sealing wax onto a page, or a handful of gems slipping from palm to palm. ~ Edward St. Aubyn

Although his intimacy with Stephen Maturin did not allow him to ask questions that might be judged impertinent, it was of such a rare kind that he could ask for money without the least hesitation. "Have you any money, Stephen?" he said, the Marine having vanished in the trees. "How I hope you have. I shall have to borrow the Marine's guinea from you, and a great deal more besides, if his message is what I dearly trust. My half-pay is not due until the month after next, and we are living on credit."
"Money, is it?" said Stephen, who had been thinking about lemurs. There were lemurs in Madagascar: might there not be lemurs on Reunion? Lemurs concealed among the forests and the mountains of the interior? "Money? Oh, yes, I have money galore." He felt in his pockets. "The question is, where is it?" He felt again, patted his bosom, and brought out a couple of greasy two pound notes on a country bank. "That is not it," he muttered, going through his pockets again. "Yet I was sure--was it in my other coat? did I perhaps leave it in London?--you are growing old, Maturin--ah, you dog, there you are!" he cried triumphantly, returning to the first pocket and drawing forth a neat roll, tied with tape. "There. I had confused it with my lancet-case. It was Mrs Broad of the Grapes that did it up, finding it in a Bank of England wrapper that I had--that I had neglected. A most ingenious way of carrying money, calculated to deceive the pick-pocket. I hope it will suffice."
"How much ~ Patrick O'Brian

You have to know the things you don't know. You have to figure out what the questions are before you can start looking for answers. ~ Tom Clancy

Asking questions is an essential part of police investigation. In the ordinary sense a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment. ~ Anthony Kennedy

Often I used my gut instinct to ask the questions and get the answers I thought the audience wanted to hear. Sometimes the interviewees said things that surprised even them. ~ Phyllis George

Where's Parrish?" asked Engle.
"He's right there," Gansey replied.
"Don't know how I missed the wind off the glacier," Engle said. "What's up, man?"
It was a rhetorical question, answerable by a lightly painted smile. The boys were here for Gansey. Where's Parrish? In a place too far away to hike to in a day. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

When you are trying to do something very innovative and revolutionary, you must also open yourself to a lot of questions. ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

I ask two questions when I am confronting life on a moment to moment basis when something important is happening. (1) What is factually happening right now? (2) What does my soul know about this and want me to know about this? It is amazing that when I give myself 20-25 seconds to seriously consider these questions, almost instantly I will arrive at a deeper awareness and a richer understanding of what is happening right now - from the soul's level of awareness. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

At the time that I was struggling with these questions, I was reading and teaching from Is There a Meaning in this Text? ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

In Israel, free men and women are every day demonstrating the power of courage and faith. Back in 1948 when Isreal was founded, pundits claimed the new country could never survive. Today, no one questions that. Israel is a land of stability and democracy in a region of tyranny and unrest. ~ Ronald Reagan

When we're considering investing in a startup, we first want to know that the entrepreneur has a clear understanding of the market. Who are the major players? What about this market is ripe for disruption? What is this startup's unfair advantage to disrupt this market? In the first conversation we have with a company, these are questions that we're looking for clear answers to. ~ Mike Belsito

Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression. ~ Sarah Churchwell

The closing of our earthly eyes is such a simple event. The shedding of the physical body does not solve the fundamental problems of enlightenment, just as changing ones clothes has nothing to do with the deep questions of life and destiny. ~ Andre Luiz Moreira

The questions to ask are what is moral, what is ethical, what is in line with your belief system, and what seems to make the most sense and cause the least amount of harm? Eat the foods that are in line with your sincere answers. ~ Robert Cheeke

To give voice to the questions
even in my own head
would have been to give them power, to confirm the presence of doubt, to risk eventual downfall. ~ Nafisa Haji

You were just trying to figure out if I'm one of you?"
Of course, stupid. When has anyone like Galen ever paid you any attention? When has there ever been anyone like Galen? Still, I'm surprised how much it hurts when he nods. I'm his little science project. All the time I thought he was flirting with me, he was really just trying to lure me out here to test his theory.
If stupid were a disease, I'd have died from it by now. But at least I know where he really stands-about his feelings for me anyway. But what his intentions for me in general are, I have no idea.
What happens if I can turn into a fish? Does he think I'll just kiss my mom good-bye, flush all my good grades-all those scholarships-down the toilet so I can go swim with the dolphins? he called himself a Royal. Of course, I don't know exactly what that means, but I can sure guess-that I'm another subject to him, someone to order around. He did say I had to obey him, after all. But if he's a Royal, why come out here himself? Why not send someone less important? I'm betting the U.S. President doesn't personally go to foreign countries looking for missing Americans who might not even be American.
But can I trust him enough to answer my questions? He already deceived me once, faking interest in me to get me out here. He lied to my face about having a mother. He even lied to my mom. What else would he lie about to get what he wants? No, I can't trust him.
Still, I want to know the truth, if only ~ Anna Banks

Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is impossible to examine questions we refuse to ask. ~ Chuck Klosterman

None of this ends tonight. This was a taste. This was a start. We keep going and we go together. We lean on people and we invite people to lean on us. We ask honest questions and we give honest answers. We ask for help, because we know that it's okay to ask for help.

Above all else, we choose to stay. We choose to fight the darkness and the sadness, to fight the questions and the lies and the myth of all that's missing. There is much not missing. We choose to stay, because we are all stories still going. Because there is still some time for things to turn around, time to be surprised and time for change. We stay because no one else ca play your part.

Life is worth living. We'll see you tomorrow. ~ Jamie Tworkowski

Busyness allows us to avoid the deepest questions of our souls. It keeps us at arm's length from our truest, most authentic selves. And when we don't know our deepest, most authentic selves, we can't know what work and what role God has for us in this world. In fact, when we don't know our deepest, most authentic selves, we don't really God, because it is God who creates our innermost selves, and it's God who invites this authentic self into deep relationship with him. ~ Michelle DeRusha

Statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death. ~ James A. Garfield

Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and that everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer "yes" to both of these, then you really understand impermanence. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

here was no great personal tragedy to shake my foundations, no injustice or betrayal to justify my falling away- just a few pesky questions that unraveled my faith like twine and left me standing here unable to sing a song I know by heart, chilled by a shadow no one else can see. ~ Rachel Held Evans

The road to Hell, you say, is paved with good intentions. Charming. But actually it's paved with intriguing questions. ~ Glen Duncan