Ultimate Questions Quotes

At the heart of my metaphysic there is the ultimate question and at the heart of the universe there is the ultimate questioner. ~ Kedar Joshi

Merrie Destefano storms the world of urban fantasy with AFTERLIFE, breathing new life into the vast genre of the undead. Gritty, poignant, in the tradition of Bladerunner, with the nostalgia of New Orleans. With crisp and beautiful prose, AFTERLIFE blurs the line between the living and the dead to ask life's ultimate questions-even if they take nine lives to solve. ~ Tosca Lee

It is easy to answer the ultimate questions - it saves you bothering with the immediate ones. ~ John Osborne

The best way to address the big ultimate questions is likely to be through dialogue with Nature. We must pose pointed sub-questions that give Nature a chance to respond with meaningful answers, in particular with answers that might surprise us. ~ Frank Wilczek

Ultimate questions will always lie beyond the scope of empirical science as it is. ~ Paul Davies

Only in Christ can men and women find answers to the ultimate questions that trouble them. Only in Christ can they fully understand their dignity as persons created and loved by God. ~ Pope John Paul II

What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. The philosopher, of all people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself. ~ Hans-Georg Gadamer

Animals have this way of constantly confronting us with ultimate questions - about truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, God and sanctity and the soul - forcing us to define ourselves and our relationship to the world. ~ Matthew Scully

Computers are ridiculous. So is science in general. CHURCH_TURING Thesis, Theodore Rosak Version
This view is prevalent among certain people who see in anything smacking of numbers or exactitude a threat to human values. It is too bad that they do not appreciate the depth and complexity and beauty involved in exploring abstract structures sch as the human mind, where, indeed, one comes in intimate contact with the ultimate questions of what to be human is. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

The spiritual energy of our time, as I've come to understand it, is not a rejection of the rational disciplines by which we've ordered our common life for many decades - law, politics, economics, science. It is, rather, a realization that these disciplines have a limited scope. They can't ask ultimate questions ... they don't begin to tell us how to order our astonishments, what matters in life, what matters in a death, how to love, how we can be of service to each other. These are the kinds of questions religion arose to address and religions traditions are keepers of conversation across generations about them. ~ Krista Tippett

The existence of God is not logically necessary, and yet, on the basis of some profound peculiar empirical order in the universe, it seems that He exists as the ultimate uncreated Being, implying a paradox, as no logically unnecessary entity can be uncreated. This paradox is the ultimate question asked by God, who is nothing but the ultimate questioner. ~ Kedar Joshi

Science is incapable of supplying answers to ultimate questions about why things exist and what their purpose is. ~ Nicola Cabibbo

Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk. The great thing is to live, to clutch at our existence and race away with it in some great and enthralling pursuit. Above all, I must beware of all ultimate questions- they are too maddeningly unanswerable- let me eschew philosophy and burn Omar. ~ W.N.P. Barbellion

. . . [T]o live in an inspired condition, to know truth, to be free, to love another, to consummate existence, to abide with death in clarity of consciousness - without which, racing and conniving to evade death, the spirit holds its breath and hopes to be immortal because it does not live - is no longer a rarefied project. Just as machinery has embodied ideas of good, so the technology of destruction has also acquired a metaphysical character. The practical questions have thus become the ultimate questions as well. Annihilation is no longer a metaphor. Good and Evil are real. The inspired condition is therefore no visionary matter. It is not reserved for gods, kings, poets, priests, shrines, but belongs to mankind and to all of existence. ~ Saul Bellow

Every culture has its own creation myth, its own cosmology. And in some respects every cosmology is true, even if I might flatter myself in assuming mine is somehow truer because it is scientific. But it seems to me that no culture, including scientific culture, has cornered the market on definitive answers when it comes to the ultimate questions. Science may couch its models in the language of mathematics and observational astronomy, while other cultures use poetry and sacrificial propitiations to defend theirs. But in the end, no one knows, at least not yet. The current flux in the state of scientific cosmology attests to this, as we watch physicists and astronomers argue over string theory and multiverses and the cosmic inflation hypothesis. Many of the postulates of modern cosmology lie beyond, or at least at the outer fringes, of what can be verified through observation. As a result, aesthetics - as reflected by the "elegance" of the mathematical models - has become as important as observation in assessing the validity of a cosmological theory. There is the assumption, sometimes explicit and sometimes not, that the universe is rationally constructed, that it has an inherent quality of beauty, and that any mathematical model that does not exemplify an underlying, unifying simplicity is to be considered dubious if not invalid on such criteria alone. This is really nothing more than an article of faith; and it is one of the few instances where science is faith-based, at lea ~ Dennis J. McKenna

The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all
acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice.
This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings - happiness, peace of mind, exaltation - must be sought by each man within himself alone.
Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society.
It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to giv ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The ultimate question of who we are is set before us at all times and answered with every action. ~ Bryant H. McGill

Besides a fascinating story, the John/Joan/David Reimer case highlights several issues of prime importance about sex and gender that can be applied to questions surrounding sexual orientation. First, the body of evidence collected over several decades from adults who underwent unnecessary and wrong gender assignment and sex reassignment surgeries teaches us that trying to match gender to genitals should not be a standard. Gender and genitals do not necessarily align. Gender is an innate trait established within the fetal brain. Furthermore, the attempt to change what is natural and inborn in a person has devastating effects on lives. ~ Kathy Baldock

Christendom and heathendom now stand face to face ... At bottom is a violent and irreconcilable quarrel about the nature of God and the nature of an and the ultimate nature of the universe; it is a war of dogma. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Ravi has such nice manners--probably because he is English, and isn't it a fact that English people have better manners than Americans? He says sorry a lot. "Sorry, can I just…" "Sorry?" His accent is charming, I keep saying pardon so he'll speak again.
For my part, I try to lighten the mood with questions about England. I ask him why English people call private school public school, if his public school was anything like Hogwarts, if he's ever met the royal family. His answers are: because they are open to the paying public; they had head boys and head girls and prefects but no Quidditch; and he once saw Prince William at Wimbledon, but only the back of his head. ~ Jenny Han

We have many goals, but only one ultimate purpose of life. That purpose is to be happy. ~ Debasish Mridha

And besides, she was curious. She had questions. And answering questions was very nearly always more important than caution. ~ Jim Butcher

What do you have against happiness?" said the man.

"Nothing, I guess."

"Then don't talk about things you don't know. There's no reason you shouldn't let your feelings flourish. Is it not the ultimate act to feel the greatest happiness? If pain is evil, then is not happiness good? Happiness is how we measure the worth of good things. The more pleasure we feel, the happier we are."

"Yes, but true goodness transcends what one can eat and feel," said Jeskun, remembering his teacher's words. "I don't disagree that happiness is the greatest good; I just don't agree with the objects of your pleasure. The ultimate pleasure is infinite, and all you have to offer me are things that rot. Your happiness, your pleasure, is merely temporary, and in the end it only leads to more suffering."

-Along the Many Houses of Damnation. ~ R. Janvier Del Valle

Literature is, to my mind, the great teaching power of the world, the ultimate creator of all values, and it is this, not only in the sacred books whose power everybody acknowledges, but by every movement of imagination in song or story or drama that height of intensity and sincerity has made literature at all. Literature must take the responsibility of its power, and keep all its freedom: it must be like the spirit and like the wind that blows where it listeth; it must claim its right to pierce through every crevice of human nature, and to descrive the relation of the soul and the heart to the facts of life and of law, and to describe that relation as it is, not as we would have it be ... ~ W.B.Yeats

People who exist at the margins of society are very much like Alice in Wonderland. They are not required to make the tough decision to risk their lives by embarking on an adventure of self-discovery. They have already been thrust beyond the city's walls that keep ordinary people at a safe distance from the unknown. For at least some outsiders, "alienation" has destroyed traditional presumptions of identity and opened up the mythic hero's path to the possibility of discovery. What outsiders discover in their adventures on the other side of the looking glass is the courage to repudiate self-contempt and recognise their "alienation" as a precious gift of freedom from arbitrary norms that they did not make and did not sanction. At the moment a person questions the validity of the rules, the victim is no longer a victim. ~ Jamake Highwater

He set the RAM on the desk, then reached into his back pocket to pull out his grimoire. The size of a small paperback novel, it'd been a gift from Ambrose to help him understand some of the madness that surrounded him, and to answer some of the "other" questions that came up.

"All right, Nashira," Nick said in a low tone. "Talk to me. What the heck is watching me?"

He slid his knife out of his pocket, opened the book, and pricked his finger, allowing three drops of blood to touch a blank page. "Dredanya eire coulet" he whispered, waking the female spirit who lived inside the enchanted pages. The moment he finished speaking, his blood began swirling until it formed words:

Do not fear that which cannot be seen.
For they are lost in between.
'Tis the ones who come alive
That your blood will allow to thrive.

Nick snorted at the cryptic stanzas. "Not really useful, Nashira. Doesn't answer my question."

His blood crawled over to the next page.

Answer, answer, you always say,
But it doesn't work that way.
In time, the truth you shall find.
And then you will understand my rhyme.

"I'm such a masochist to even try talking to you"

Underneath the words, a picture of an obscene gesture formed.

"Oh very nice, Nashira. Very nice. Wherever did you learn that?"

In your pocket I reside.
Ever privy to your deride.
But more than that, I can see.
Sherrilyn Kenyon

The ultimate, unqualified mystery is beyond Human experience ~ Joseph Campbell

Could the search for ultimate truth really have revealed so hideous and visceral looking an object? ~ Max Perutz

Beauty lies in the mind, inner soul ...
Beauty lies in the innocence, appreciation, understanding, warmth, expressions, caring nature, behavior towards others, the depth of understanding the situations, the kind of sufferings, struggles, losses, difficulties, sorrows, happiness- the thick n thins through which person sails throughout hi/her life. Which ultimately reflects on your face- the ultimate reflection of your mind and thus evolves a beautiful personality. ~ Sriveena Dhagavkar

Be sceptical, ask questions, demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted. But here's the thing: When you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that. ~ Michael Specter

Many people operate as though the definition of faith were, Don't ask questions, just believe. They quote Jesus himself, who taught his followers to have the faith of a child (Mark 10:15). But I once heard Francis Schaeffer respond by saying, "Don't you realize how many questions children ask?" ~ Nancy Pearcey

I could feel Monika nudging me furiously at this point, but I refused to look at her. I wasn't feeling particularly reverent about my mother's deadness, or about the vicar, but I do despise that ghastly, 'You've got to laugh, haven't you?' approach to religious occasions. As a young man, I often goaded my believing friends with crudely logical questions about God. But as the years have passed, I have found myself hankering more and more for a little cosy voodoo in my life. Increasingly, I regard my atheism as a regrettable limitation. It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather, a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mystery: a species, in fact, of neurosis. There is no chance of my being converted, of course - it is far too late for that. But I wish it wasn't. ~ Zoe Heller

Why do you got to ask so many damn questions?" he wanted to know. As they went back out into the rain, he opened his black duster and closed it over her thin, shivering body, clasped her against him. "I'd rather ask questions," she said, "than answer them. ~ Joe Hill

Whenever any actor comes into a producer session, they have so many questions, and we still can't really tell them that much until they get the job. ~ Maurissa Tancharoen

One of the recurring philosophical questions is: 'Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?' Which says something about the nature of philosophers , because there is always someone in a forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone. ~ Terry Pratchett

That was the whole trouble with police work. You come plunging in. a jagged Stone Age knife, to probe the delicate tissues of people's relationships, and of course you destroy far more than you discover. And even what you discover will never be the same as it was before you came; the nubbly scars of your passage will remain. At the very least. you have asked questions that expose to the destroying air fibers that can only exist and fulfill their function in coddling darkness. Cousin Amy, now, mousing about in back passages or trilling with feverish shyness at sherry parties - was she really made all the way through of dust and fluff and unused ends of cotton and rusty needles and unmatching buttons and all the detritus at the bottom of God's sewing basket? Or did He put a machine in there to tick away and keep her will stern and her back straight as she picks out of a vase of brown-at-the-edges dahlias the few blooms that have another day's life in them? Or another machine, one of His chemistry sets, that slowly mixes itself into an apparently uncaused explosion, poof!, and there the survivors are sitting covered with plaster dust among the rubble of their lives. It's always been the explosion by the time the police come stamping in with ignorant heels on the last unbroken bit of Bristol glass; with luck they can trace the explosion back to harmless little Amy, but as to what set her off - what were the ingredients of the chemistry set and what joggled them together - it was ~ Peter Dickinson

Sometimes my doubt seems intuitive, but most likely it derives from an implausibility or a logical problem I may at first find difficult to identify and articulate. It is interesting to me to work through questions that arise in this way. ~ Marilynne Robinson

WikiLeaks combines several of my prior interests in technology, policy questions, and journalism. ~ Charles Ferguson

the great fundamental questions looming before us,"21 namely, the unnatural alliance of politics and corporations. It ~ Edmund Morris

No twenty-first-century reader can understand the ultimate triumph of the Allied powers in World War II in 1945 without a grasp of the large drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. The liberation of western Europe is a triptych, each panel informing the others: first, North Africa; then, Italy; and finally the invasion of Normandy and the subsequent campaigns across France, the Low Countries, and Germany. From a distance of sixty years, we can see that North Africa was a pivot point in American history, the place where the United States began to act like a great power - militarily, diplomatically, strategically, tactically. ~ Rick Atkinson

Nevertheless, after an hour in the tub drinking alone, I felt no closer to solving my dilemma. Instead I was left with an empty bottle of wine, pruney fingers, and more questions. ~ Penny Reid

Twenty years ago many chemists would have defended the theory of bond arms as a satisfactory explanation because they had become accustomed to thinking of it as unique and as ultimate. ~ Henry Margenau

Part of the genius of the rhetoric of law and order is that as a principle (rather than a practice), it can be sold as the ultimate call for equality: We all deserve the law. We all deserve order. All lives matter. ~ Chris Hayes

I realize now that there are a lot of paths in life. Some we choose and some are chosen for us. I was dealt some shit, just like a lot of us are, and I made a lot of poor choices too. I have to take responsibility for those. But the only thing we'll get from trying to figure out where another path would have taken us are questions there are no answers to, and heartbreak that can't be healed. Regardless of how we got there, all any of us can do is move forward from where we are. ~ Mia Sheridan

By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions. ~ Norman Ralph Augustine

Does it matter that people and things
Have words,
Have names?
If not,
Why read any book?
A litany of useless letters
Detached from bone, muscle.
Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,
Person
Real? ~ Stasia Ward Kehoe

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself ... My ideas are my harlots. ~ Denis Diderot

Do what's right! Do the best you can and treat others the way you want to be treated because they will ask three questions: (1) Can I trust you? (2) Are you committed? (3) Do you care about me as a person? ~ Lou Holtz

Boko Haram represents the ultimate Fatwa of our time. The question is does the sect's Fatwa represent the articulated position of the majority of Muslims in this nation? My reading over the last few years is an unambiguous no. We are undergoing an affliction that many could not have imagined about a decade ago. Let us confront the ultimate horror now. To remain inactive at this moment is to betray our children and to consolidate the ongoing crimes against our humanity. We must take the battle to the enemy ... We sent our children to school; we must bring them back to school. ~ Wole Soyinka

In my public statements I have earnestly urged that there rested upon government many responsibilities which affect the moral andspiritual welfare of our people. The participation of women in elections has produced a keener realization of the importance of these questions and has contributed to higher national ideals. Moreover, it is through them that our national ideals are ingrained in our children. ~ Herbert Hoover

Questions, I've got some questions
I want to know you
But what if I could ask you only one thing
Only this one time, what would you tell me?
Well maybe you could give me a suggestion
So I could know you, what would you tell me?
Maybe you could tell me what to ask you
Because then I'd know you, what would you tell me
Please tell me that there's time
To make this work for all intents and purposes
And what are your intentions, will you try?
Impressions, you've made impressions
They're going nowhere
They're just going to wait here if you let them
Please don't let them
I want to know you
And if they're going to haunt me
Please collect them
Please just collect them
And now I'm begging
I'm begging you to ask me just one question
One simple question
Because then you'd know me
I'll tell you that there's time
To make this work for all intents and purposes
At least for my own
What is a heart worth if it's just left all alone?
Leave it long enough and watch it turn into stone
Why must we always be untrue? ~ Jack Johnson

Johnny sighed in the darkness. "I don't understand the exact purpose of the Keats Project or the other Old Earth analogs, but I suspect that it is part of a TechnoCore project going back at least seven standard centuries to realize the Ultimate Intelligence."
"The Ultimate Intelligence," I said, exhaling smoke. "Uh-huh. So the TechnoCore is trying to ... what? ... to build God."
"Yes. ~ Dan Simmons

We cannot search for the truth and for the way out of suffering without the freedom to think, investigate, and experiment. Secular people cherish freedom, and refrain from investing supreme authority in any text, institution or leader as the ultimate judge of what's true and what's right. Humans should always retain the freedom to doubt, to check again, to hear a second opinion, to try a different path. Secular people admire Galileo Galilei who dared to question whether the earth really sits motionless at the centre of the universe; they admire the masses of common people who stormed the Bastille in 1789 and brought down the despotic regime of Louis XVI; and they admire Rosa Parks who had the courage to sit down on a bus seat reserved for white passengers only. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The river of knowledge has no depth. ~ Chinonye J. Chidolue

When things don't add up, either you don't have a calculator or you forgot to use commonsense by simply asking. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Librarians and other information specialists have developed user's guides to evaluating websites. These include questions we should ask, such as "Is the page current?" or "What is the domain?" (A guide prepared by NASA is particularly helpful.) ~ Daniel J. Levitin

The heart that was filled
With your memories
Is empty and lost now
I claim to enjoy the rain
While there's a cyclone within
There's always a smile on my face
But, I question
"Is there any happiness?"
When the entire world is asleep
Your silence speaks to me
In a thousand different ways
In a thousand different versions
In a thousand different colors
In a thousand different flavors
The heart that was filled
With your memories
Is empty and lost now
I claim to enjoy the rain
While there's a storm within
There's always a smile on my face
But, I question
"Is there any happiness? ~ Jyoti Patel

Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren't these the same questions as last year's [physics] final exam?
Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different. ~ Albert Einstein

Until I was twenty I was sure there was a being who could see everything I did and who didn't like most of it. He seemed to care about minute aspects of my life, like on what day of the week I ate a piece of meat. And yet, he let earthquakes and mudslides take out whole communities, apparently ignoring the saints among them who ate their meat on the assigned days. Eventually, I realized that I didn't believe there was such a being. It didn't seem reasonable. And I assumed that I was an atheist.

As I understood the word, it meant that I was someone who didn't believe in a God; I was without a God. I didn't broadcast this in public because I noticed that people who do believe in a god get upset to hear that others don't. (Why this is so is one of the most pressing of human questions, and I wish a few of the bright people in this conversation would try to answer it through research.)

But, slowly I realized that in the popular mind the word atheist was coming to mean something more - a statement that there couldn't be a God. God was, in this formulation, not possible, and this was something that could be proved. But I had been changed by eleven years of interviewing six or seven hundred scientists around the world on the television program Scientific American Frontiers. And that change was reflected in how I would now identify myself.

The most striking thing about the scientists I met was their complete dedication to evidence. It reminded me of th ~ Alan Alda

The ruinous deeds of the ravaging foe

(Beowulf)

The best-known long text in Old English is the epic poem Beowulf. Beowulf himself is a classic hero, who comes from afar. He has defeated the mortal enemy of the area - the monster Grendel - and has thus made the territory safe for its people. The people and the setting are both Germanic. The poem recalls a shared heroic past, somewhere in the general consciousness of the audience who would hear it.
It starts with a mention of 'olden days', looking back, as many stories do, to an indefinite past ('once upon a time'), in which fact blends with fiction to make the tale. But the hero is a mortal man, and images of foreboding and doom prepare the way for a tragic outcome. He will be betrayed, and civil war will follow. Contrasts between splendour and destruction, success and failure, honour and betrayal, emerge in a story which contains a great many of the elements of future literature. Power, and the battles to achieve and hold on to power, are a main theme of literature in every culture - as is the theme of transience and mortality.
................
Beowulf can be read in many ways: as myth; as territorial history of the Baltic kingdoms in which it is set; as forward-looking reassurance. Questions of history, time and humanity are at the heart of it: it moves between past, present, and hope for the future, and shows its origins in oral tradition. It is full of human speech and sonorous images, ~ Ronald Carter

It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It's also a very clear path to happiness. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

People often ask themselves the right questions. Where they fail is in answering the questions they ask themselves, and even there they do not fail by much ... But it takes time, it takes humility and a serious reason for searching. ~ William Maxwell

Remember this, if you have written a couple dozen short stories and sold them to national markets, the chances are you know as much about the business as many of the editors you are trying to sell to. You are going to have to write what they want, but always be sure the paths they want you to take are reasonable. The chances are they know what is salable and they must be listened to. But only you can determine what is distinctly yours and that is your road to the ultimate success. Editors come and go constantly and the next man may love what the last man despised.

It's all taste and opinion and one man is different from the next. Mr. Faulkner might not appreciate Mr. Spillane, but that is also true in reverse.

None of this need concern you. Out there, beyond the lighted limits of the place you sit and type, somebody is waiting for the kind of thing you write. Writing can never be more than communication and should never be less.

So what do you do? You keep typing. ~ William Campbell Gault