Quotes & Sayings About Asking Questions

I have this clutter of questions all churned together in my mind and they won't stop churning. I've found out too much and not enough. there are too many pieces that could go together too many ways and I can't stop shifting them around. There has to be some way it all makes sense and it doesn't yet."
"You're asking a lot of life if you want it to make sense."
Most of the time, Joliffe was of the same opinion, but he shook his head against it now like against a fly's buzz and said nothing, frowning at the pen he was still twirling.
Basset watched him a moment, then said,
"Well, if you can't let it go, go at it as if you were trying to make a story of all these pieces you have. Shift them around and fill the gaps until they make the sense you want. — Margaret Frazer

The point of asking questions is to find true answers; the point of measuring is to measure accurately; the point of making maps is to find your way to your destination ... In short, the goal of truth goes without saying, in every human culture. — Daniel Dennett

I wish I were a poet. I've never confessed that to anyone, and I'm confessing it to you, because you've given me reason to feel that I can trust you. I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers. But I wish I were a poet.
Albert Einstein, a hero of mine, once wrote, 'Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open.'
I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we'll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What's real? What isn't real? Maybe those aren't the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on?
I wish I had made things for life to depend on. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I've heard all sorts of things about a kiss (melting, fireworks, music), but no one ever told me it's a conversation: asking, accepting, deciding, inviting, giving ... Questions posed and answered. — Katherine Reay

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

Physics is not about having memorized all the answers, but rather about asking the right questions. For when the right question is posed of a phenomenon, either the answer becomes clear or at least a path to further and more fruitful questioning is revealed. — James Kakalios

Neal didn't like to be asked things. It made his jaw tense. He'd give you a flippant answer. Like, whatever you were asking, it wasn't any of your business.
Like nothing was anyone's business.
Like nobody should ask questions that didn't absolutely need to be answered. — Rainbow Rowell

Helena silently put down the phone and tiptoed to the bathroom door. What should she do? Run? Knock? Walk in? Get naked? And ... how should she feel? Excited? Freaked out? Angry because he hadn't called for three weeks? Relieved, because the wait was over and she could finally start asking all those questions swimming in her head? The door swung open, and Niccolo boldly stood before her in his birthday-suit-glory, his unforgettable diamond-cut abs glistening with drops of water. A whoosh of air left her lungs. I'm going with ... naked and excited! — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! — Ralph Ellison

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

I'm determined, and I'm passionate and driven about whatever I commit myself to do. If I don't know something, I'm going to ask, and I've got no problems in asking questions. I never have. People ask me, "Are you nervous when you go on the runway? You don't look it." Yes, I am. — Naomi Campbell

Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions. — Miriam Toews

I thought that it was strange to assume that it was abnormal for anyone to be forever asking questions about the nature of the universe, about what the human condition really was, my condition, what I was doing here, if there was really something to do. It seemed to me, on the contrary, that it was abnormal for people NOT to think about it, for them to allow themselves to live, as it were, unconsciously. Perhaps it's because everyone, all the others, are convinced in some unformulated, irrational way that one day everything will be made clear. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for humanity. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for me. — Eugene Ionesco

It's not that I believe women are more ethical. I will say that one of women's greatest weaknesses is probably our greatest strength. We are incredibly hard on each other. We ask all the questions. Men are more easygoing. If you've ever been in a group of women, you'll recognize this: Nobody gives one woman the opportunity to lead the way without asking a whole lot of questions. — Vicki Donlan

Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline and who manage to grow up before they blow up are invited to join the Yale faculty. Within the university they go on asking their questions and trying to find the answers ... it is a place where the world's hostility to curiosity can be defied. — Edmund Morgan

When you go into a room, you knock first. If you start asking people questions and they start tilting back in their chairs, it means they don't want to talk about it. It means if you look at something on their computer screens, they're likely to knock your brains out with a baseball bat. — Carol Plum-Ucci

You know that thing where you repeat a word over and over until it just sounds like utter gibberish? That's what doing a day of press on a film is like. Ten interviews in a row, all asking pretty much the same questions until you find yourself giving pretty much the same answers. — John Niven

My father wasn't allowing me control and the financial freedom that I was asking for. I was 17, about to be 18 within a year, so I started asking more questions because I felt that I needed to start learning about those things. — Dominique Moceanu

Be careful of someone who starts asking a lot of questions about you. Start asking a lot of questions about them. Turn it around. — Frederick Lenz

He keeps saying he doesn't want to get personal, yet he has no problem asking me personal questions or invading my personal space, — Jodi Ellen Malpas

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

Scott Buchanan ... taught me that the questions that can be answered are not worth asking. — Milton Mayer

I think sometimes I get carried away, like I'm speaking to an imaginary audience rather than just trying to figure something out for myself. Ideally, I try to balance that - that I'm asking these questions of myself, how does this work, why does this happen, what's going on here. — David Byrne

The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids! They ask question and have a sense of wonder. They have curiosity. 'Who, what, where, why, when, and how!' They never stop asking questions, and I never stop asking questions, just like a five year old. — Sylvia Earle

In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet. — Elizabeth Hardwick

It's a girl!" he cried, and stood there, not quite knowing what to do, until the others crowded around him, hugging him, hugging each other, laughing, crying, asking questions. A girl. Michael should have known. "How big is she?" "Who does she look like?" "How's Leigh?" "When can we see them?" The babbling continued nonstop until, shortly thereafter, Jon was allowed to carry his daughter into the hall just outside the delivery room, where the Popewells waited excitedly. — Barbara Delinsky

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

I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems. — Robert Benchley

People are fascinated by space flight. It makes them interested in science, gets them asking questions and motivates them. — Helen Sharman

...when we cease asking questions, when we stop being self-critical, and when we no longer engage with others, then we surrender our ability to grow--to progress. Let's begin the conversation. — Mehdi Ghafourifar

But most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes.
But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious. — Leo Tolstoy

I worked very hard as a young journalist learning the trade and asking questions, understanding what a story is and being able to present that in a way that people would find interesting. — Jill Douglas

Leo," Amelia asked suspiciously, "what are you planning to do to her?" "Why do you always insist on asking questions when you know you won't like the answers?" "Because, being an optimist," she said tartly, "I always hope I'm wrong."
- Amelia & Leo — Lisa Kleypas

Of course, the tricky thing about these little questions was that, once I started asking them, it was hard to stop. — Jenna Miscavige Hill

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

I love being coached. I get angry when I'm not coached. I ask a lot of questions and certainly appreciate any insight and feedback. I think if you ever stop listening to coaching or stop asking questions, you probably need to be doing something else. — Peyton Manning

Does it never strike you that doubt can be a madness, as well as faith? That asking questions may be a disease, as well as proclaiming doctrines? You talk of religious mania! Is there no such thing as irreligious mania? — G.K. Chesterton

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

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

Faith means that I deliberately shut myself down to this Book, the Bible. I refuse to philosophize. I refuse to ask certain questions. People are always asking them. They want to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. You cannot. You will never understand it. It is too great. So you accept it; and you stop asking questions. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

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

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

Questioning ourselves and our country is healthy and essential. — Bryant McGill

The three of us stood there for a minute. I don't know what Stew was thinking, and the filing cabinet wasn't thinking anything. But I was thinking, is this the world? Is this really the place in which you've ended up, Snicket? It was a question that struck me, as it might strike you, when something ridiculous was going on, or something sad. I wondered if this was really where I should be, or if there was another world someplace, less ridiculous and less sad. But I never knew the answer to the question. Perhaps I had been in another world before I was born, and did not remember it, or perhaps I would see another world when I died, which I was in no hurry to do. In the meantime, I was stuck in the police station, doing something so ridiculous it felt sad, and feeling so sad it was ridiculous. The world of the police station, the world of Stain'd-by-the-Sea and all of the wrong questions I was asking, was was the only world I could see. — Lemony Snicket

He reminded me of all the questions I asked God years ago when God was too busy to answer.
Try asking God. I think it helps especially if you have problems talking to adults. — Juanita Ray

My parents adopted me, and then, by the age of four or five, I was asking all sorts of questions, and they found themselves with a son who was interested in the sorts of things that they valued but weren't natural to them. — Michael Gove

Artists want to sell their work, sure. But they aren't out there asking questions about what people want and what they don't want, now are they? — Michael Scott

Do I have to do everything myself?" The cry was a soul-freezing mixture of rage and torment. "Ain't there no one to stop asking questions and just do my bidding? By God, I'll kill and kill and kill and kill and never stop killing if people don't do what I say. I'll beat you dummies till the blood runs out of your eyes. I'll tie every man on this godforsaken island to a tree and he'll bark like a dog for me to throw him a bone. — Walter Kaylin

Alignment, to us, means bringing pieces into the same line - the same direction. The metaphor is that a magnet will make pieces of iron point toward it. Agreement is share intellectual understanding. Tribes are clusters of people, and people are complex and nonrational at times. If a tribe is united only by agreement, as soon as times change, agreement has to be reestablished. If people learn new ideas or see a problem from a new perspective, they no longer agree, so tribes based on agreement often discourage learning, questioning, and independent thought. Tribes based on alignment want to maximize each person's contribution, provided that they stay pointed in the same direction like magnetized iron filings. — Dave Logan

Perhaps they are singing songs to you,' he said, 'and I just think they're asking me questions.' He paused again. Sometimes he would pause for days, just to see what it was like. — Douglas Adams

This was not the last time I was to spoil my own fun by asking questions. — Caroline Pratt

When doing a revival, you have a lot of people asking you questions about someone who played it before, and to me that's neither here nor there - it has no bearing on the material that I have to use. The material that is written down in a score and script that the writers originally used is what I use. — Kelli O'Hara

Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing? — Robert Adams

I read all of the stories that people write about me. The ones that are really interesting are the ones where they actually write their take on me as opposed to just printing what I said, because they're asking similar questions so often, sometimes it just sounds like I'm answering the questions different intentionally. — Curtis Jackson

An absolute joy to read - it stimulates and engages. Westney is asking new questions not addressed elsewhere ... and you will be drawn in by the author's inviting, yet quietly compelling style. — Patricia Powell

The rational scrutiny of religious faith involves asking believers only two questions: How do you know that? What makes you so sure that the claims of your faith are right and the claims of other faiths are wrong? — Jerry A. Coyne

Sometimes you know the answer to a question deep down but you ask the question for some other reason. — Allan Dare Pearce

Nowadays, the media have to be there to keep you from asking too many questions, from getting together with other people who might want to do the Jeffersonian thing and call out the government. — Henry Rollins

It is sensible to begin by asking the beginning questions, why imagine power in the first place, and what is the relationship between one's motive for imagining power and the image one ends up with. — Edward Said

Each new day brings new opportunities. You have to search to be able to find these opportunities. — Lailah Gifty Akita

So I pulled a gun on him and demanded his wallet."
The soda in my mouth becomes the soda in my nose. "You had a gun?" I cough and sputter into my napkin.
Mom's eyes go round and she pressed her finger to her lips, mouthing, "Shhh!"
"Where did you get a gun?" I hiss.
"Oliver lent it to me. He was always looking out for me. Told me to shoot first and run. He said the asking-questions-later part was for the police." She grins at my expression. "Does that earn me cool points?"
I swirl a fry in the mound of ketchup on my plate. "You want cool points for pulling a gun on my father?" I say it with all the appropriate disdain and condescension it deserves, but deep down, we both know she gets mega cool points for it.
"Psh." She waves her hand. "I didn't even know whether or not it would fire. And anyway, he didn't hand me his wallet. He propositioned me instead."
"Okay. Ew."
"Not like that, you brat. — Anna Banks

When you give feedback, make sure to give some examples. You listen well: I know that because you ask questions, nod your head, maintain eye contact, and so on. — Assegid Habtewold

Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books." You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I'm not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man. — Malcolm X

Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today - the age of science - science fiction is our mythology. — Michael Shermer

As one reads mathematics, one needs to have an active mind, asking questions, forming mental connections between the current topic and other ideas from other contexts, so as to develop a sense of the structure, not just familiarity with a particular tour through the structure. — William Thurston

Stop asking yourself questions that have no meaning. Or if they have, you'll find out when you need to
find out both the questions and the answers. — Thomas Merton

A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men. — H.L. Mencken

Leadership isn't answering the questions others ask. Leadership is asking others to answer their own questions. — Simon Sinek

Sometimes, when you are busy and children ask funny questions, you don't think so much. You just answer quickly so they will leave you alone. If you don't answer, they will just keep asking or they will go and do something very bad. — Jinat Rehana Begum

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

Then you will make a law that they shall have such an education as will enable them to attain the greatest skill in asking and answering questions? Yes, he said, you and I together will make it. Dialectic, then, as you will agree, is the coping-stone of the sciences, and is set over them; no other science can be placed higher - the nature of knowledge can no further go? I agree, he said. But to whom we — Plato

9/11 just seemed to come out of the blue. And there were people asking questions, but then there were no answers. At some point, it just turned into, "We've got to do what we've got to do." And I think those are the moments when you grow, when you get the opportunity to try to figure out, exactly as you said, what price are you paying, and if it's worth that price. — Susan Sarandon

that the truth is finer and that the only answers each of us hears are to the questions we are capable of asking. — Zia Haider Rahman

Thousands of years ago, weren't we capable of building enormous structures like the pyramids? Weren't we capable of worshiping gods, weaving, making fire, finding lovers and wives, sending written messages? Of course we were. But although we've succeeded in replacing slaves with wage slaves, all the advances we've made have been in the field of science. Human beings are still asking the same questions as their ancestors. In short, they haven't evolved at all. — Paulo Coelho

If collapse is anything, it is a planetary immersion in the maelstrom of
paradox. Unless we understand and honor paradox, we will end up, like all of
the mainstream media on earth, asking all of the wrong questions. — Carolyn Baker

The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God's will, the less
I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do; and
as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently,
without asking too many questions. — Umberto Eco

Father laughed, which upset Bruno even more; there was nothing that made him more angry than when a grown-up laughed at him for not knowing something, especially when he was trying to find out the answer by asking questions. — John Boyne

... That little narrative is an example of the mathematician's art: asking simple and elegant questions about our imaginary creations, and crafting satisfying and beautiful explanations. There is really nothing else quite like this realm of pure idea; it's fascinating, it's fun, and it's free! — Paul Lockhart

The interview went well. I found him warm but not eager, friendly but slightly impersonal, and he answered all questions concerning music with an engaging straightforwardness. Nonmusical questions he either evaded with the skill of an expert, or ignored, apparently from lack of interest in the subjects broached. Already he had the gift of fielding impertinent questions by offering quotable evasions instead. For instance, I remember asking him if he was a religious person. He replied that he didn't want to talk about religion.
"Why not?" I pursued.
"Because my music is so very odd already that I see no reason to make myself sound any odder. — Philip Glass

And from the time I was a kid, I've had this internal monologue roaring through my head, which doesn't stop - unless I'm asleep. I'm sure every person has this; it's just that my monologue is particularly loud. And particularly troublesome. I'm constantly asking myself questions. And the problem with that is that your brain is like a computer: If you ask a question, it's programmed to respond, whether there's an answer or not. I'm constantly weighing everything in my mind and trying to predict how my actions will influence events. Or maybe manipulate events are the more appropriate words. It's like playing a game of chess with your own life. And I hate fucking chess! — Jordan Belfort

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION How much work did you do today that you will be proud of tomorrow? I don't mean just how you handled the big things, but also how you addressed the little, seemingly insignificant ones. Did you make progress on what matters most to you, or did you allow the buzz, busyness, and expectations of others to squelch your passion and focus? I've been asking these questions of others and myself each day for more than a decade, and they are the main reason I originally felt compelled to write Die Empty. Through my work I've encountered many teams of brilliant, sharp, amazing, talented people who have at some point "settled in" or begun coasting on past success. Unfortunately, — Todd Henry

I think the question is who am I? That's what we all should be asking ourselves. Who am I? Well, if I am first a Christian conservative then that dictates my response to all questions so my response first as a Christian conservative is to vote consistent with my value system. — Tim Scott

My father was very disappointed by war and fighting. And he thought language could help us out of cycles of revenge and animosity. And so, as a journalist, he always found himself asking lots of questions and trying to gather information. He was always very clear to underscore the fact that Jewish people and Arab people were brother and sister. — Naomi Shihab Nye

A lot of my books deal with very controversial issues that most people often don't want to talk about, issues that, in my country, are more likely to get put under the carpet than get discussed. And when you talk about moral conundrums, about shades of gray, what you're doing is asking the people who want the world to be black and white to realize instead that maybe it's all right if it isn't. I know you'll learn something picking up my books, but my goal as a writer is not to teach you but to make you ask more questions. — Steven Tyler

You must have been working very hard here, with so few distractions."
Mary's eyes darkened and she looked away.
"Not quite as much as I hoped for. At times the loneliness and the unanswered questions can get overwhelming, like very loud voices echoing inside my head, just asking 'why' 'who' and making me think about my wasted life. — Olga Nunez Miret

Again, after his fall, God gave him an occasion to repent and to receive mercy but he kept his stiff-neck held high. He came to him and said "Adam, Where are you?" instead of saying "What glory you have left and what dishonor you have arrived at?" After that, He asked him "Why did you sin? Why did you transgress the commandment?" By asking these questions, He wanted to give him the opportunity to say, "Forgive me." However, he did not ask for forgiveness. There was no humility, there was no repentance, but indeed the opposite. — Dorotheus Of Gaza

Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them. — William S. Burroughs

I don't have any of the answers, son. Never did. All I can do is keep asking the questions. Keep trying to make sense of why people do what they do. — Rodman Philbrick

'Presence of God' is really that understanding that sometimes when you step out of your own shoes and just open your ears and listen to what's going on around you, you get answers to the questions you were asking. — Dave Gahan

I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them. — Mark Haddon

Do things that will get people asking questions, the answer to which is the Gospel. — Lesslie Newbigin

Asking good questions is half of learning. — Elijah Muhammad

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

I suspect that had my dad not been president, he'd be asking the same questions: How'd your meeting go with so-and-so? . How did you feel when you stood up in front of the people for the State of the Union Address-state of the budget address, whatever you call it. — George W. Bush

I don't need to be liked, but I need to be vital - on set or on stage - and I think that probably would be my advice: Stay vital. It's about saying 'no' and asking the tough questions and believing in yourself when no one else will, but you have to know the rules to break them. — Logan Marshall-Green

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

Well, when you look at a lot of science fiction novels they're asking questions about power. There are questions about what it means to have power and what are the long-term consequences of power. — Junot Diaz

If you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer. Asking questions is the ABC of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems. — Edward Hodnett

I'm constantly trying to keep people guessing as to what I'm doing, and I will spend enormous amounts of time looking at manuscripts and asking questions, and people will say, 'I know what his next book is about.' — Dan Brown

My friends and the people I know understand that I'm going to ask them what they're doing, how they're dating, who they're dating, where they're going and what they're doing. I'm constantly asking those questions and making sure I'm in touch with the customer. — Sam Yagan