Quotes & Sayings About Asking Good Questions

I feel shabby - because I've made a name, quite a good name, out of photography. And I still find myself asking the same questions: Who am I? What am I supposed to be? What have I done? — Don McCullin

All good thinking is a matter of asking and answering three elementary questions. What is being said? Is it true? What of it? — Os Guinness

All things being equal, why not be married to a rich man? (Somewhere, Hannah thinks, there must be a needlepoint pillow asking this very question in a cleverer way.) — Curtis Sittenfeld

I've played journalists before, and I have good friends who are journalists. I think being an actor is not very far from being a journalist. Because you investigate, you try to understand, you're asking questions, you're interested in the other. — Juliette Binoche

May we be the kind of good faith Christians who shape the future by asking the right questions and then confronting what is wrong, clarifying what is confused, celebrating what is good, and creating what the world is missing. — David Kinnaman

I told her, "Bring your scriptures, Preach My Gospel, and every question you have. Questions are good. Let's see what the Lord will teach us together."

...During one of our study sessions together, as she threw a steady stream of questions at me, I asked her if she was asking questions against a backdrop of faith or one of doubt. "In other words, are you saying, 'Here's something I don't understand, so the gospel must not be true.' or are you willing to say, 'Here's something I don't understand, but I wonder what the Lord or His prophets will teach us about this?'

Are your questions asked with the assumption that there are answers? Are you will to trust the Lord and give Him the benefit of the doubt? — Sheri Dew

I think all good architecture should challenge you, make you start asking questions. You don't have to understand it. You may not like it. That's OK. — Thom Mayne

But perhaps most important of all, having too many people on a team makes team dynamics during meetings and other decision-making events almost impossible. That's because a good team has to engage in two types of communication in order to optimize decision making, but only one of these is practical in a large group. According to Harvard's Chris Argyris, those two types of communication are advocacy and inquiry. Basically, advocacy is the statement of ideas and opinions; inquiry is the asking of questions for clarity and understanding. When a group gets too large, people realize they are not going to get the floor back any time soon, so they resort almost exclusively to advocacy. It becomes like Congress (which is not designed to be a team) or the United Nations (ditto). — Patrick Lencioni

Brothers and sisters, as good as our previous experience may be, if we stop asking questions, stop thinking, stop pondering, we can thwart the revelations of the Spirit. Remember, it was the questions young Joseph asked that opened the door for the restoration of all things. We can block the growth and knowledge our Heavenly Father intends for us. How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn't get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew? — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

She had been to her Great-Aunt Willoughby's before, and she knew exactly what to expect. She would be asked about her lessons, and how many marks she had, and whether she had been a good girl. I can't think why grownup people don't see how impertinent these questions are. Suppose you were to answer:
"I'm the top of my class, auntie, thank you, and I am very good. And now let us have a little talk about you, aunt, dear. How much money have you got, and have you been scolding the servants again, or have you tried to be good and patient, as a properly brought up aunt should be, eh, dear?"
Try this method with one of your aunts next time she begins asking you questions, and write and tell me what she says. — E. Nesbit

Confucius sat down to rest, and his students immediately started asking him questions. On that day, he was in a good mood and so decided to answer. Someone asked him: — Paulo Coelho

Nature answers every question. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I'm a pretty solid Christian. But even as an altar boy, I was always asking the bigger questions
you know: if God is, in fact, good, what is all this death I see? And if God is gentle, what is all this suffering I see? I've found some of the answers in Eastern religion. It explained my Christianity to me. Good and evil are the same thing. You can't have one without the other. It's the balance, it's the temperance of things. — Tim Allen

For the man on the quest, the universe becomes enchanting-an effect that good religion accomplishes. There are no dead ends, no wasted time, no useless characters or meaningless happenings. All has meaning, and God is in all things waiting to speak and to bless. Everything belongs once a man is on his real quest and asking the right questions. — Richard Rohr

I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers. — Rick Riordan

The South: What is this place? What's different about it? Is it different anymore? Good questions. Old ones, too. People have been asking them for decades. Some of us even make our living by asking them, but we still don't agree about the answers. — John Shelton Reed

With murder, the victim is gone, and not forced to deal with what happened to her. The family must deal with it, but not the victim. But rape is much worse. The victim has a lifetime of coping, trying to understand, of asking questions, and the worst part, of knowing the rapist is still alive and may someday escape or be released. Every hour of every day, the victim thinks of the rape and asks herself a thousand questions. She relives it, step by step, minute by minute, and it hurts just as bad.
Perhaps the most horrible crime of all is the violent rape of a child. A woman who is raped has a pretty good idea why it happened. Some animal was filled with hatred, anger and violence. But a child? A ten-year-old child? Suppose you're a parent. Imagine yourself trying to explain to your child why she was raped. Imagine yourself trying to explain why she cannot bear children. — John Grisham

They [people] start asking themselves "Well which one is the best? Which one would be good for me?" And all those questions are much easier to ask if you're choosing from six than when you're choosing from 24 and if you look at the marketplace today most often we have a lot more than 24 of things to choose from. — Sheena Iyengar

Communicating is about asking good questions and engaging with each other. — Michele Jennae

There are six stages to knowledge: Firstly: Asking questions in a good manner. Secondly: Remaining quiet and listening attentively. Thirdly: Understanding well. Fourthly: Memorising. Fifthly: Teaching. Sixthly- and it is its fruit: Acting upon the knowledge and keeping to its limits. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

Some of us enter deconstruction willingly. We sat through too many church services that made us queazy with songs-with-words-we-stopped-feeling-good-about-singing, predictable messages, certainty, and focus on belief instead of practice. Something stirred within us, and we started asking the questions swirling around in our head. Others of us were pushed into deconstruction by wounding church experiences. We saw one too many inconsistencies, abuses of power, or crazy-stuff-that-only-insiders-sometimes-see that pushed us over the edge and called everything into question. — Gerardo Marti

Designing a winning strategy is the art of asking questions, experimenting and then constantly renewing the thinking process by questioning the answers. No matter how good today's strategy is, you must always keep reinventing it. — Constantinos C. Markides

(on the Pip and Squeak asking for a taxi tip)
"How about a tip?"
"Here's a tip," I said. "Next time you're at the library, check out a book about a champion of the world."
"By that author with all the chocolate?"
"Yes, but this one's even better It has some very good chapters in it."
"That's the kind of tip we can use," Squeak said. "Pip reads to me between fares. — Lemony Snicket

What good is it Habiba, to deny the truth? Your friendship woke something in me all those centuries ago, some dormant humanity that had lingered through the years, and after you died, it recoiled and hid again.
But Aladdin has woken it once more. With his sun-bright smile and his laughing eyes and his way of asking the hardest kind of questions. After you, I swore to never love again.
But I love him.
And so I must let him go. — Jessica Khoury

It is good to ask questions, especially when we are uncertain, unsure or confused. However, we must check our attitudes and be certain that we do not fall into a position of "questioning." Questioning will only yield mistrust and division. Our motives should be to bring greater understanding and clarity to situations. Should we speak up or should we be silent? We must consider our choices prayerfully. Think of a time when you approached someone with a "questioning" attitude. How did he or she respond to you? What about a time when you approached someone with a pure attitude of asking questions? Was the response different? — Michael D. Sedler

Hey, Megan?"
She peeked one lid open. "Hmm?"
"Can we have ice cream for breakfast?"
Her mouth curved into a grin. She couldn't think of anyone, save maybe Kate, who could draw a smile from her so quickly. But he was just unexpectedly adorable. "Maybe. If you're a good boy." She cringed. Why the hell did she say that? Was she ... flirting with him? Restraining a grimace, she chanced a look at him.
His dark gaze shifted from playful to scorching. "And what would that entail?"
Heat shot through her body, and unfamiliar desire pooled in her belly. Flustered, she kicked off the top cover. "Not asking questions like that, to start. Now go back to sleep. It's too damn early to be awake."
She heaved a deep breath to calm her racing heart .
"if you say so." Even with his eyes closed, a smile continued to play around his lips. — Laura Kaye

What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie,what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die
and everything will end. You will die and learn everything
or stop asking. — Leo Tolstoy

Productivity is for robots. What humans are going to be really good at is asking questions, being creative, and experiences." Kevin Kelly — Timothy Ferriss

You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified. — Barbara Kingsolver

He had a taste for asking complicated questions, and for tracking the answers into whatever rabbit hole they might lead him. He had, in short, an obsessive streak. It wasn't until after he'd hired Schwall away from Bank of America to work for RBC that Brad noticed this side of Schwall. He should have seen it before, simply from Schwall's chosen role on Wall Street: product manager. A product manager, to be any good, had to be obsessive. — Michael Lewis

I had not laid a finger on the boy's head. I have never poked or prodded either a baby or a child, so why did I feel so dirty? Part of it was just my makeup, the deep-seated belief that I deserve a basement room, but a larger, uglier part had to do with the voices I hear on the talk radio, and my tendency, in spite of myself, to pay them heed. The man in the elevator had not thought twice about asking Michael personal questions or about laying a hand on the back of his head. Because he was neither a priest nor a homosexual, he hadn't felt the need to watch himself, worrying that every word or gesture might be misinterpreted. He could unthinkingly wander the halls with a strange boy, while for me it amounted to a political act - an insistence that I was as good as the next guy. — David Sedaris

A therapist is a very smart person who wears glasses and can help you with your problems by asking a lot of questions instead of giving you shots, which is really amazing. But a psycho, as everyone knows, is a crazy person in the movies that you never want to run into in real life. So a psychotherapist is a very smart crazy person that you should stay away from for your own good. — Lenore Look

Brooke stared in surprise. "You brought me lunch?"
"I was in the neighborhood."
She checked out the label on the bag. "DMK is twenty minutes from here."
"I was in that neighborhood, and now I'm here," he said in exasperation. "Seriously, woman, you are impossible to feed." He strode over and set the bag on her desk. "One cheeseburger with spicy chipotle ketchup and a side of sweet potato fries - chosen specifically for a certain spicy and sweet girl I know - and a green dill pickle for your eyes. So there." He crossed his arms over his chest.
Brooke studied him. "You seem very ornery right now."
"As a matter of fact, I am."
"Why?"
"I don't know," he huffed. "Just ... eat your Brooke Burger. Stop asking so many questions. Sometimes a guy just wants to buy a girl lunch. Any objections to that? Good. Enjoy your Sunday, Ms. Parker."
He strode out of her office, gone as quickly as he'd appeared.
Brooke stared at the doorway and blinked. — Julie James

I won't call my work entertainment. It's exploring. It's asking questions of people, constantly. 'How much do you feel? How much do you know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this?' A good movie will ask you questions you don't already know the answers to. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand? — John Cassavetes

If you don't understand, ask questions. If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Questions I've found helpful: What is one good thing I've learned from this? What was a downside to this situation that I can be thankful is no longer my burden to carry? What were the unrealistic expectations I had, and how can I better manage these next time? What do I need to do to boost my courage to pursue future opportunities? What is one positive change I could make in my attitude about the future? What are some lingering negative feelings about this situation that I need to pray through and shake off to be better prepared to move forward? What is one thing God has been asking me to do today to make tomorrow easier? — Lysa TerKeurst

I've always been really curious about things and slightly confused by the world, and I think someone who feels that way is in a good position to be the one asking questions. — Terry Gross

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen. — Alan Alda

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

I start asking a lot of questions about my own life, and it's not necessarily fun, but it's a good exercise. — Brad Pitt

I think it's part of moral progress to be able to face things that once looked as if they weren't problems. I have that kind of feeling about our relation to animals... Abortion's a similar case-there are complicated moral issues. Feminist issues were a similar case. Slavery was a similar case. I mean, some of these things seem easy now, because we've solved them and there's a kind of shared consensus-but I think it's a very good thing that people are asking questions these days about, say, animal rights. I think there are serious questions there. Like, to what extent do we have a right to experiment on and torture animals? I mean, yes, you want to do animal experimentation for the prevention of diseases. But what's the balance, where's the trade-off? — Noam Chomsky

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

Student-people are different from other people. They spend their entire life asking questions, and as soon as they have found out the answers, they start all over again with new, harder questions... when a student-person finds a good answer to a hard question, the other student-people will gasp, hug each other, and then throw a party. Those parties never last long, for student-people are in a hurry to go back to work and find new answers. — Roberto Trotta

People have to be secure in order to transfer their money to you. Never forget that. How you make them secure is to not come at them from above (action, yang) telling them how marvelous the product is and how marvelous you are. Instead, work on their comfort zone first, keeping silent for the most part, leading things along effortlessly by asking questions (nonaction, yin). When you do get to talk, be sure to tell them that everything is cozy, safe, and secure. People need to hear that. Work on their positive energy, and tell them about the good fortune that is about to descend upon them in these exciting and positive times. Then, and only then, mention the dumb screws. — Stuart Wilde

Asking good questions is half of learning. — Elijah Muhammad

A good part of the trick to being a first-rate scientist is in asking the right questions or asking them in ways that make it possible to find answers. — Anne Roe

The way that you become world-class is ... by asking good questions. — Tim Ferriss

Management teams aren't good at asking questions. In business school, we train them to be good at giving answers. — Clayton Christensen

Trust. We stake our lives on it, but it's a subject that not even the Gallagher Academy can teach. When do you let your guard down? Who do you let in? And I knew at that moment, as I sat beside my mother, bathing in the warm spring light, that those were the questions a good spy never stops asking — Ally Carter

I shan't be a minute," said Pridmore. Matilda knew better. She settled herself to wait, and swung her legs miserably. She had been to her Great-Aunt Willoughby's before, and she knew exactly what to expect. She would be asked about her lessons, and how many marks she had, and whether she had been a good girl. I can't think why grown-up people don't see how impertinent these questions are. Suppose you were to answer: "I'm the top of my class, auntie, thank you, and I am very good. And now let us have a little talk about you, aunt, dear. How much money have you got, and have you been scolding the servants again, or have you tried to be good and patient, as a properly brought up aunt should be, eh, dear?" Try this method with one of your aunts next time she begins asking you questions, and write and tell me what she says. Matilda — Neil Gaiman

If we shall take the good we find,asking no questions,we shall have heaping measures. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The foundation of data gathering is built on asking questions. Never limit the number of hows, whats, wheres, whens, whys and whos, as you are conducting an investigation. A good researcher knows that there will always be more questions than answers. — Karl Pippart III

In asking philosophical questions, we use a reason shaped by the body, a cognitive unconscious to which we have no direct access, and metaphorical thought of which we are largely unaware. The fact that abstract thought is mostly metaphorical means that answers to philosophical questions have always been, and always will be, mostly metaphorical. In itself, that is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact about the capacities of the human mind. But it has major consequences for every aspect of philosophy. Metaphorical thought is the principal tool that makes philosophical insight possible and that constrains the forms that philosophy can take. — George Lakoff

If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is the temperate zone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Except they kept asking me questions like 'What is your biggest source of conflict about the Pope?' Or 'Has the Pope ever tried to suppress your scientific work?' Completely out of left field!
"They didn't want to hear me tell them how much Pope Benedict supported the Vatican Observatory and its scientific work. So, finally, frustrated that they weren't getting the story they wanted out of me, one of them asked, 'Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?'
"What did you answer?"
"Only if she asks!"
"I love it! How did they react?"
"They all got a good laugh, which is what I intended. And then, the next day, they all ran my joke as if it were a straight story, as if I had made some sort of official Vatican pronouncement about aliens. — Guy Consolmagno

Good science is done by being curious in general, by asking questions all around, by acknowledging the likelihood of being wrong and taking this in good humor for granted, by having a deep fondness for nature, and by being made jumpy and nervous by ignorance. — Lewis Thomas

Faith does not inquire whether there are good works to be done, but even before asking questions, faith has done the works already. — Martin Luther

Alice didn't like being criticised, so she began asking questions. "Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?" "There's the tree in the middle," said the Rose: "what else is it good for?" "But what could it do, if any danger came?" Alice asked. "It could bark," said the Rose. "It says 'Bough-wough!' " cried a Daisy, "that's why its branches are called boughs! — Lewis Carroll

Good questions are to be appreciated, not answered. — Raheel Farooq

The whiff of whatever I'd gotten in the ladies' room had definitely taken a big chunk out of any embarrassment I may have had left. Tonight had been my first time in a big-city club of any kind, let alone a strip or sex club. I had questions, was intensely curious, and between the clover weed and my partner's hands all over me less than a half hour before, I wasn't the least bit shy anymore about asking those questions. The little voice in my head was frantically waving for me to stop. I kicked the door shut on my little voice. Party pooper.
I half turned on my tuffet toward Ian, my right leg crossing over my left, also toward Ian. My little voice was banging on the door and screaming at me.
"Are people listening with our table anymore?" I whispered.
Ian glanced at the glowing surface. "No."
"Good. So, what is it with men and titty bars? — Lisa Shearin

And when I started college, I think I was good at two things: arguing and asking questions. — Karen Hughes

[ ... ] dGT: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it's, what are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?"
(another) interviewer: I think a healthy balance of both is good.
dGT: Well, I'm still worried even about a healthy balance. Yeah, if you are distracted by your questions so that you cannot move forward, you are not being a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world. And so the scientist knows when the question "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" is a pointless delay in our progress.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson - EPISODE 489: NERDIST PODCAST, 20m19s) — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I wrote an episode for 'thirtysomething,' and a producer said, 'That's really good, but what is it about? What does it say about you? What questions are you asking yourself?' I had never thought about that. This comment changed who I was, because it made me look at my own soul, the dark corners in my soul, and accept that dark side. — Paul Haggis

Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of them, an earnest type, started asking the questions. "Miss O'Connor," he said, "why was the Misfit's hat black?" I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed. Then he said, "Miss O'Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?" "He does not," I said. He looked crushed. "Well, Miss O'Connor," he said, "what is the significance of the Misfit's hat?" I said it was to cover his head; and after that he left me alone. Anyway, that's what's happening to the teaching of literature. — Flannery O'Connor

Individuals are forced to make choices in an environment they did not choose. They would surely prefer to have a broader array of good opportunities. The question we should be asking - not instead of but in addition to questions about penal policy - is whether the denizens of the ghetto are entitled to a better set of options, and if so, whose responsibility it is to provide them. — Michelle Alexander

In school, we're rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question. — Richard Saul Wurman

Creativity doesn't come from glancing quickly at your Twitter feed while in line at Starbucks. It comes from deep thought. It comes from voraciously reading books - long books that require focused attention. It comes from meaningful discourse with other intellectually curious people. It comes from listening and asking good questions. — Joshua Rogers

People like to know you're listening, and something as simple as a clarification question shows not only that you are listening but that you also care about what they're saying. You'll be surprised how much respect and appreciation you gain just by asking good questions. — Travis Bradberry

When society puts some small fraction of its wealth into asking and answering big questions, it reminds us all of the curiosity we have about our universe. And that leads to all sorts of good places. — Sean Carroll

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. Izzy, she would say, did you ask a good question today? That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist. — Isidor Isaac Rabi

I listen to all these complaints about rudeness and intemperateness, and the opinion that I come to is that there is no polite way of asking somebody: have you considered the possibility that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion? But that's a good question to ask. Of course we should ask that question and of course it's going to offend people. Tough. — Daniel Dennett