QUESTION QUOTES II
quotations about questions
Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.
MILAN KUNDERA
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.
ORSON SCOTT CARD
Ender's Shadow
The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.
NEIL POSTMAN & CHARLES WEINGARTNER
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
As human beings, don't we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
"Does God exist?", Salon, October 2, 2011
Suppose that you decide to have the entire "curriculum" consist of questions. These questions would have to be worth seeking answers to not only from your point of view but, more importantly, from the point of view of the students. In order to get still closer to reality, add the requirement that the questions must help the students to develop and internalize concepts that will help them to survive in the rapidly changing world of the present and future.
NEIL POSTMAN & CHARLES WEINGARTNER
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
ANONYMOUS
Old questions are not answered--they only go out of fashion.
DONALD SCHÖN
attributed, Governing Health: The Politics of Health Policy
Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.
SUSANNE LANGER
Feeling and Form
Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
She Stoops to Conquer
There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.
JOHN STEINBECK
East of Eden
I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question.
YOGI BERRA
attributed, The Yogi Book
The only stupid question is the one that is not asked.
SAM HO
Operations and Quality Management
The ignorant start questions which have been already answered thousands of years ago by the wise.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The answer is a mirror of the question.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
Fools may ask questions, but it takes wise men to answer them.
GEORGE DENISON PRENTICE
Prenticeana
Ask not a foolish question in public.
STILPO
attributed, Day's Collacon
To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.
ANNE RICE
The Vampire Lestat
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
SCOTT ADAMS
attributed, Laugh Off: The Comedy Showdown Between Real Life and the Pros
To stand in the midst of ... this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity in existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning ... that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human has this feeling just because he is human.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
attributed, The Gay Science
Questions are often more effective than statements in moving others. Or to put it more appropriately, since the research shows that when the facts are on your side, questions are more persuasive than statements, don't you think you should be pitching with questions?
DANIEL H. PINK
attributed, The Future of Strategy