Quotes & Sayings About Asking What's Wrong

Internet's been down most of the day [at work]. Doing research by just asking everyone what we remember to be true. What could possibly go wrong? — Rachel Maddow

The only mistake you have made is asking the wrong question. It isn't about what you did wrong. It's what you have not yet done. — Holly Lynn Payne

The philosopher Edmund Pincoffs has argued that consequentialists and deontologists worked together to convince Westerners in the twentieth century that morality is the study of moral quandaries and dilemmas. Where the Greeks focused on the character of a person and asked what kind of person we should each aim to become, modern ethics focuses on actions, asking when a particular action is right or wrong ... This turn from character ethics to quandary ethics has turned moral education away from virtues and toward moral reasoning. If morality is about dilemmas, then moral education is training in problem solving. — Jonathan Haidt

Instead of asking, "Why is there war?" we might ask, "Why is there peace?" We can obsess not just over what we have been doing wrong but also over what we have been doing right. Because we have been doing something right, and it would be good to know what, exactly, it is. — Steven Pinker

In the World Wars, people were perfectly able to shoot other people just because they belonged to the wrong country, without ever asking what their opinions were. Faith too is like that. — Richard Dawkins

I expected a good deal more from you," Marcelline said, "You bungled it."
"Yes," he said. "What else could I do? I was asking the wrong woman to marry me. — Loretta Chase

But every day we meet someone whose behavior suddenly changes from one moment to the next. And we wonder: what happened to this person I thought I knew? Why is he acting so aggressively? Is it stress at work?
And then the next day the person is normal again. You're relieved, but soon after the rug is pulled out from under you when you least expect it. And this time, instead of asking what's wrong with this person, you wonder what you did wrong. — Paulo Coelho

The problem is that we are asking the wrong questions - questions based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the wholistic nature of nutrition. We're asking, "How much vitamin C are we getting?" when we should be asking, "What foods should we be eating to support our bodies' ability to maintain health? — T. Colin Campbell

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

Does he love me?
You're asking the wrong question. What you need to know is are you in a position to give him the love he needs. And whatever happens or doesn't happen will be equally gratifying, knowing that you are capable of love is enough. If it isn't him, it will be someone else ... Don't try to keep a safe distance so as to see what happens. Don't wait to be certain before you take a step. What you give, you will receive, although it might sometimes come from the place you least expect. — Paulo Coelho

One note is not music. It is what lies between the notes that makes the music. And what is between them is: their relationship. Relationships are the music life makes. Context creates meaning. Asking, "What is the meaning of life?" is the wrong question; it makes you look in the wrong places. The question is, "Where is the meaning in life?" The place to look is: between. — Carl Safina

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them
like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

We are trained to ask "What's wrong and how we fix it?" Instead, start by asking - "What works, what have we got, what's possible and who cares?" — Peter Kenyon

Asking isn't what I had in mind," Sicarius said.
"Yes, I can see that." Amaranthe planted a hand on his chest, fingers splayed. "Why don't you give Yara and me a few minutes alone to discuss this? I'll brief you on whatever we decide to do before we do it. And you can loiter nearby in case anything goes wrong."
His face didn't soften exactly - and he gave that hand a long look before meeting Amaranthe's eyes - but the hostility he'd been oozing did seem to lessen. "Assassins don't loiter," he said.
The comment startled Evrial, and she wondered if she'd heard it correctly. The man hadn't uttered much that could be classified as humor, not with her around anyway. Maybe he was simply feeling indignant.But Amaranthe smiled. "What do you call it?"
"Standing. Purposefully. — Lindsay Buroker

If we do not suspect ourselves of having been in the wrong, our search for what is right won't be completely sincere. Sincerely asked, the question, "What is right to do?" includes the question, "Might I be in the wrong?" With either of these questions we ask the other; we pull ourselves up short and start over. This is the key: Even in asking this question, if we ask it sincerely, we begin to change in our way of being; we begin to become the kind of person capable of doing the right thing without counterfeiting it. — C. Terry Warner

Ask God for what you want and do not be concerned about asking for the wrong thing, because as you draw ever closer to Him, you will cease asking for things altogether. "Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him" (Matthew 6:8). Then why should you ask? So that you may get to know Him. — Oswald Chambers

You have been asking what you could do in the great events that are now stirring, and have found that you could do nothing. But that is because your suffering has caused you to phrase the question in the wrong way ... Instead of asking what you could do, you ought to have been asking what needs to be done. — Steven Brust

I believe God uses a layoff as sort of a blow torch, turning up the heat in our lives, so we can not only "see the forest for the trees", but to help burn off wrong mindsets, unconfessed sin, and help us get back on the right path with Him. Layoffs are not fun, but they can and will produce much good in your life, if you respond to God and seek what it is, He is asking you to do, or not do, give, walk away from, walk towards, etc. As one of my favorite preachers, Dr. Charles Stanley, always says, "God is up to something good in your life! — Mary Aucoin Kaarto

Since many people have been asking me to elaborate on why I think "Inglourious Basterds" is akin to Holocaust denial, I'll try to explain what I mean as succinctly as possible, by paraphrasing Roland Barthes: anything that makes Fascism unreal is wrong. For me, "Inglourious Basterds" makes the Holocaust harder, not easier to grasp
as a historical reality, I mean, not as a movie convention. Insofar as it becomes a movie convention, it loses its historical reality. — Jonathan Rosenbaum

With moviemaking, the audience always has to keep asking, 'What happens next?' If you have the wrong piece of music over a scene, people aren't going to get the scene. If you have the wrong camera angle, people aren't going to pay attention. That's as much a part of the process as getting people to talk to you. — Josh Fox

We started by asking what's wrong with the world, and we ended up discovering what's right with it. — Tom Shadyac

Photographers do themselves a disservice by talking too much about the equipment they use. Consequently people don't take them seriously as creators in their own right. When people talk to writers about their work, they ask about their ideas and inspirations. When they talk to photographers, they ask about what cameras or film they use. That's wrong - as wrong as asking a writer what pencil and laptop he uses. — Peter Turnley

It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness or inexperience. It takes a while to grasp that a garden isn't a testing ground for character and to stop asking, what did I do wrong? Maybe nothing. — Eleanor Perenyi

Too often, a problem is allowed to fester until it reaches a crisis point ... and the American people are left asking the question: what went wrong and why? — Darrell Issa

Oh, Lord. Why was he asking her that? He knew better than to ask a woman what was wrong - because somehow it would end up being his fault. Even if every aspect of her mood was beyond his knowledge or control, it would still end up being his fault - because he had testicles. Whenever a woman was annoyed, somehow it always came around to the Y chromosome. — Tracy Brogan

We all say we want our kids to be happy, only happy, and healthy, but we don't want that. We want them to be like we are, or better than we are. We as humans are very unimaginative in that sense. We aren't equipped for the possibility that they might be worse. But I guess that would be asking too much. It must be an evolutionary stopgap - if we were all so specifically, vividly aware of what might go horribly wrong, we would none of us have children at all. — Hanya Yanagihara

It is placing the Executive and the Movement in an absolutely wrong position to be hawking your conscience round from body to body asking to be told what you ought to do with it. — Ernest Bevin

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

My dick didn't seem to be aware that she was there. She kept asking me what was wrong, and I was so out of it that I thought she meant what was wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit. I'm not surprised she left. I suspect she won't be coming back. — Nikki Sixx

The thing about sports, at least for guys, is that nobody ever defines the rules, not even in gym class. Asking what a penalty means is like asking who Jesus was. It's one of those things you're just supposed to know, and if you don't, there's something seriously wrong with you. — David Sedaris

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

What's wrong with asking questions?" "Nothing." Everything. Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt. His father had told him that. "Don't let them ask questions. You're already giving them the answers, even if they don't know it." "But you're curious, too," she said. "Why do you say that?" "You guard the light. And light sees everything. — Jeff VanderMeer

This is a book about questioning what others believe to be true, not accepting ideas just because famous people say they are right. I think knowledge is more like a wave than a switch. Only very rarely do we go from being totally wrong to totally right
as a light turns off and on. Instead, what we learned before allows us to move on to what we can see next. We can surf ahead, but there will always be another challenge, another crest, another setp. We must always keep thinking and asking new questions. — Marc Aronson

I'm getting less good at faking it. People in my family are noticing and asking what's wrong. My friends give me invitations to talk, to cry. I love them for their caring, but I want to run from it. I have lost their language, their facility with words that convey feelings. I am in new territory and feel like a foreigner in theirs. — Martha Manning

I seemed to see two camps before me, and there was something radically wrong with both of them. The people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists, while the morally upright didn't seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world. I was emotionally drawn to the former path - what young person wouldn't be? Liberate the oppressed and sleep with who you wanted! But I kept asking the question, If morality is relative, why isn't social justice as well? — Timothy Keller

What art does is to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to its transforming power. Art is not part of the machine. Art asks us to think differently, see differently, hear differently, and ultimately to act differently, which is why art has moral force. Ruskin was right, though for the wrong reasons, when he talked about art as a moral force. Art is not about good behaviour, when did you last see a miracle behave well? Art makes us better people because it asks for our full humanity, and humanity is, or should be, the polar opposite of the merely mechanical. We are not part of the machine either, but we have forgotten that. Art is memory - which is quite different [from] history. Art asks that we remember who we are, and usually that asking has to come as provocation - which is why art breaks the rules and the taboos, and at the same time is a moral force. — Jeanette Winterson

You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can't. But nobody else can either. Not a state home, that's for sure. For heaven's sake, the best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That's why it's the wrong thing to ask, if you're really trying to make a decision."
So what's the right thing to ask?"
Do I want to try? Do I think it would be interesting, maybe even enjoyable in the long run, to share my life with this kid and give her my best effort and maybe, when all's said and done, end up with a good friend. — Barbara Kingsolver

When I was in Auschwitz, I kept asking, why am I here, what did I do wrong? What did my grandfather do wrong? And a young American man, he put me in the right knowledge. You didn't do anything wrong, he said, the world did something wrong, terribly wrong. This young man, he went to Budapest in the beginning of it all, and he saved Jews, he gave out passports of Sweden, and because the Hungarians didn't know how to read Swedish, this was how my father was saved. And thousands of others too, with these pieces of paper. I am here to tell you that one man can make a difference, and that man can be you, any of you ... — Alice Lok Cahana

There's no use asking Mom and Dad to talk to Nana about her punishment. They won't stand up to her. They never do. This is why I decide I am not going to speak to Nana or Papa or my parents. What Leila and I did was wrong. But now I have been put in the middle of something else entirely. Something about Adam and the adults and things that happened before I was born, maybe even before Adam and Uncle Hayden and Mom were born.
~pgs 144-145; Hattie on adulthood — Ann M. Martin

What is wrong with your parents? It's just reading. As a parent myself, I can certainly think of worse habits than reading. Like heroin! At least you're not asking them to preorder some heroin! — John Green

Once I shifted my thinking, though, I stopped roughing myself up and started asking Why? Why don't you want to write? What's wrong? And while the answers were never pleasant (because really, it's no fun to realize you messed up and now you have to rewrite a scene, or a chapter, or half a book), they were progress, and they were necessary. They were also extremely good for me, because once I got my story back on the right track, my bad writing days vanished, my daily word counts shot up, the quality of my writing improved, and life in general got a whole lot better. — Rachel Aaron

She stopped pushing but declared; Prentice, I know how this works. Sure, she seems fine now. But in fifteen years when she's standing on top of a clocktower with an automatic rifle mowing down innocent bystanders, dont't call ME asking what went wrong. — Kristen Ashley

You said he was shot by his own clone troopers?" "That was what his recording said. We, of course, had no way to confirm it. Asking the local garrison of troopers if someone may have shot a Rodian Jedi Knight offplanet would attract the wrong sort of attention. But it's stunning in its implications, isn't it? Looked at in that light, it might have been the Jedi who were betrayed, not the Emperor." Not — Kevin Hearne

Correct me if I'm wrong, Valentine," St. Just said, "but wasn't it you who was cursing and stomping about here last night because I suggested we wait one day to see what the weather was going to do?" "I wasn't cursing. Ellen frowns on it, and one needs to get out of the habit if one is going to have children underfoot." "Doesn't exactly work that way," Westhaven muttered. "I'm willing to tarry a day if you're asking us to, Val. Devlin?" "The horses can use the rest." Val looked momentarily nonplussed at having won his battle without firing a shot then dropped down onto a sofa. "So, Westhaven, are you saying children don't inspire a man to stop cursing?" "They most assuredly do not," Westhaven said, rising. "His Grace and I are agreed on this, which is frightening of and by itself. Let me order some toddies, and we can discuss exactly how the arrival of children changes an otherwise happily married man's vocabulary. — Grace Burrowes

So, what's the plan?" I asked as I sat down at the table not really big enough for two. Liam grabbed my bag and tossed it onto the table. "First we unpack, and then I expect to see you on your knees." After the exchange with Diaz my brain automatically went somewhere very, very bad. "W-w-what?" I could feel the blush stretching over every inch of my body. Seriously, I think my feet were even embarrassed and angry. "I'm not ... I won't ... " I knew the moment Liam realized what I was thinking because his face also shot up in flames. "No! Not ... That." He looked as though he was having some sort of episode, like maybe an aneurysm. "You were supposed to get down on your knees and beg me for forgiveness because you were wrong about the pizza guy. I don't want ... I mean, I wasn't asking you to
" I held up a hand. "Please don't say it. I think we've both been traumatized enough. — Tammy Blackwell

Oh my God! Stop eating that!"
"Your trail mix tastes funny," Trevor said with a cringe.
"That wasn't trail mix, you bastard! That was potpourri!"
"Well, that explains a lot," he said, giving her a sheepish smile as he returned the large wooden bowl back to the side table. She didn't need to look to know that he'd already eaten half the bowl of potpourri. She didn't even bother asking him what the hell was wrong with him since she knew the answer.
The man was a Bradford.
Enough said. — R.L. Mathewson

The poet Mary Oliver did this in one of her poems, brazenly asking, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" If you're afraid you've come to this question too late, you are wrong. Ask your Stargazer self. It will tell you what my fallen-noble friend Marianna told me in one of my darker hours: that the world is re-created in every instant of time, and this moment is always your life's beginning. No matter how many years have been stolen from you by your own ignorance, by cruel fate, or by the acts of others, you have a clean, broad slate before you. In this instant - this one now - you can begin steering by starlight, and if you do, the rest of creation will conspire to guide, teach, and help you. — Martha N. Beck

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful? — Bertrand Russell

I mean that the more confident people are about their beliefs, the more likely they are to be wrong. It's the ones who are so certain, so black and white, the ones who never consider that they could be wrong or that anyone else could be right, they're the ones who scare me. When you're not confident at least you keep checking what you do and asking yourself if you're on the right track. — John Marsden

Have you kissed many boys before?" he asked quietly.
His question brought my mind back into focus. I raised an eyebrow. "Boys? That's an assumption."
Noah laughed, the sound low and husky. "Girls, then?"
"No."
"Not many girls? Or not many boys?"
"Neither," I said. Let him make of that what he would.
"How many?"
"Why - "
"I am taking away that word. You are no longer allowed to use it. How many?"
My cheeks flushed, but my voice was steady as I answered. "One."
At this, Noah leaned in impossibly closer, the slender muscles in his forearm flexing as he bent his elbow to bring himself nearer to me, almost touching. I was heady with the proximity of him and grew legitimately concerned that my heart might explode. Maybe Noah wasn't asking. Maybe I didn't mind. I closed my eyes and felt Noah's five o' clock graze my jaw, and the faintest whisper of his lips at my ear.
"He was doing it wrong. — Michelle Hodkin

I began asking myself just what my high was about. What did I do when I was high that I didn't do when I was sober? What was wrong that heroin fixed? — Pax Prentiss

Good or bad? Right or wrong? That's what you're asking me? You'd be surprised how often you can't tell the difference. How often they want the same thing. — Robyn Roze

I keep saying that i wish our black women would not stop raising their sons to be like the niggas who left them. I see mothers covering for their deadbeat sons, putting some other child's mother through the same shit, her babyfather put her through.
We have spent the last few decades blaming absentee fathers for the lack of "graces" among our young men forgetting that they are raised by women. Women have always been other women's worst enemies. Maybe we need to start asking our mothers, what have they been doing wrong. Trying to smother the only man who won't leave them cause he can't, hes biologically linked to her. Trying to make up for the men who dumped her.
Raising monstrous, spoiled brats and then unleashing them on the female population. What we have today is a culture of men raised like daughters who do not know how to be a partner, a man and a father. — Crystal Evans

Everybody has a home team: It's the people you call when you get a flat tire or when something terrible happens. It's the people who, near or far, know everything that's wrong with you and love you anyways. These are the ones who tell you their secrets, who get themselves a glass of water without asking when they're at your house. These are the people who cry when you cry. These are your people, your middle-of-the-night, no-matter-what people. — Shauna Niequist

I know what I'm doing. I'm panicking. The first thing I should do is stop panicking. But that's not a thing to do, that's a thing to stop doing. Hey, maybe that's why I'm getting all worked up. I've been putting way too much emphasis on what I should be doing when often the real question has been what should I stop doing. So the first thing I should stop doing is asking the wrong questions. The second thing I should stop doing is panicking. — Jules Cassard

Here are a few patterns you may have seen that indicate the person you're managing is avoiding their next step of growth: covering up or attempting to brush off the severity of a mistake; hoarding data; embedding themselves as a go-to person (aka: bottleneck) by creating a system or process that only they know how to use; resorting to quick fixes instead of asking questions and looking for root causes; asking for more time or resources beyond what was agreed on in order to complete a project, instead of coming to you to talk about what went wrong so you can work together to improve it; letting tension build with a teammate or between departments instead of coming to you for advice on how to handle it. When — Jonathan Raymond

Ask what's possible, not what's wrong. Keep asking. — Margaret J. Wheatley

When's your birthday?"
I was taken aback by the question. "I don't like presents,"I said quickly, in case he got any ideas. "Who said anything about presents? I'm just asking for your date of birth."
"Thirtieth of February," I said, throwing out the first date that came to mind.
Xavier raised an eyebrow.
"Are you sure about that?"
I panicked. What had I said wrong? I ran through the months in my head and realised my mistake. OOPS
there were only twenty-eight days in February! "I mean thirtieth of April," I corrected and grinned sheepishly.
Xavier laughed. "You're the first person I've ever known to forget her own birthday. — Alexandra Adornetto

I've thought about it properly, this whole praying thing, I mean really thought about it, and what I think is that maybe people are doing it wrong; that instead of asking God nicely, people should be demanding and questioning and threatening to stop worshipping. Maybe that way, he would think differently and try to make things right, like he is supposed to; even that verse in the Bible says ask for anything and you shall receive and, I mean, whose words are those? — NoViolet Bulawayo

They have it wrong in asking if Schroeder favors Britain over France, or France over Britain. Schroeder favors Germany. That is what we all have to understand. — Gerhard Schroder

The first thing politicians ask after these tragedies is essentially: "What can we do to limit the freedom of the people?"
And that is the wrong question. The question we should be asking is: "What can we do to nurture and support a people capable of living in freedom? — Sarah Palin

I was so happy when I found out the wounds you'd inflicted weren't serious, that you had stopped."
"Yes, I stopped. Barry, all of you, see what I did as this suicide attempt. But I didn't want to die. I only wanted my mom to hear me. To come find me. To see that I was sad. To help me, I guess. I just didn't have it in me to tell her what I needed. And fine, I get now that she couldn't read my mind."
He wiped his eyes again.
"But I didn't get it then. I'm so mad at myself. What was wrong with me that I couldn't just tell her? That I didn't have the capacity to ask her for anything. — Anne Eliot

You have a certain objectivity, as a member of the audience, and you can come away maybe being provoked into a certain discourse or a certain arena of questioning, regarding how you would deal with things that your character has to deal with. Whereas when you're doing a film, once you start asking, "What would I do?," you're getting the distance greater between yourself and the character, or you're bringing the character to you, which I think is self-serving, in the wrong way. The idea is to bring yourself to the character. — Colin Farrell

She remembers talking to God a lot right after everything happened with Luke. She remembers crying and asking why, over and over. Asking for help, for strength, for understanding. Apologizing for what she did wrong. Talking through everything she could have, should have done differently. Begging for the torment to stop.
She remembers belief and trust slowly turning sour. Still, she kept talking to God out of habit. And because she didn't have anyone else to talk to. At night, in the dark sanctuary of her bedroom, alone, she could say the things she'd been keeping quiet. But she stopped expecting an answer. Stopped hoping for one.
After a while, God felt as distant, as uncaring, as everyone else.
And her prayers faded away. — Kathryn Holmes

The Universe does not judge; it conspires in favor of what we want. That is why the Warrior has the courage to look into the dark places of his soul in order to ensure that he is not asking for the wrong things. And he is always very careful about what he thinks. — Paulo Coelho

Why do any of us do what we don't want to do?" I don't respond, unsure what answer he's looking for.
He smiles, but it's sad. "Because we're afraid of what will happen if we don't."
I always considered fear to be a motivator or a reason not to do something, but I never considered it a reason to continue an ongoing behavior. This opens a vault full or questions about my own life. I've always assumed I'm afraid to engage in activities because I'm afraid of what might happen. But maybe I'm looking at it all wrong. Maybe I should be asking myself if I'm really afraid of leaving what makes me comfortable. — Denise Grover Swank

Straight guys only feel three ways about girls ... First, either they love you, and they show it by writing a song about you, like Gabriel, and asking you out, and everything is nice and fun like it should be. Second, they love you, but they're scared of their passion for you because it's so strong, like your boy Christopher, so they stuff it way, way down and ignore you, or do stupid things like make fun of you because they don't know how to express it any other way, because they're immature little babies and are too shy to, say, write a song about you. Or third, there's something wrong with them, and they start out nice and loving and then turn around and do stupid things like sleep with other girls behind your back, like Justin Bay. But we'll never figure out what went wrong with them, and neither will they, so it's not worth thinking about. Okay? That's it. The end.
Lulu Collins — Meg Cabot

Instead of asking what's wrong with rampant consumerism, we ought to be asking, 'What justifies it?' Popular art does not have to pander to the lowest level of intelligence and taste. — Bill Watterson

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don't let what's wrong with you keep you from worshiping what's right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze new trails. Don't let fear dictate your decisions. Take a flying leap of faith. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Go all in with God. Go all out for God. — Mark Batterson

The American dream does not happen by asking Americans to accept what's immoral and wrong in the name of tolerance. — J. C. Watts

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

Was I right?" she asked him. "Was I right to make a stand against what I believed to be wrong? Even though many ills have come from it? I have been asking myself this a lot lately. I must be quiet in my conscience. — Alison Weir

Oh, how an animal that is hurt looks up at you, John! An animal's actions can inform you if it is in pain. It don't hop and jump around as usual. No. You find a sad, crouching, cringing, small bunch of fur or hair, whining, and plainly asking you to aid it. It isn't hard to find out what is wrong, John; any man or woman who would pass by such a sight, just isn't worth knowing. I just can't withstand it! Why, I think that not only animals, but plants can know pain. I carry a drink to many a poor, thirsty growing thing; or, if it is torn up I put it kindly back, and fix its soil up as comfortably as I can. Anything that is living, John, is worthy of Man's aid. — Ernest Vincent Wright

What's infinity plus one?" I interrupted Katy, asking Finn my own question. "It's still infinity," Finn said, sighing.
"Wrong. It's two."
"Oh yeah? How do you figure?"
I pointed at Finn and said, "Infinity." Then I pointed at myself and said, "Plus one. That's two, genius."
"I really wish I hadn't told you my name."
"Ha. Gotcha! You think you're so good at math, but I just stumped you. — Amy Harmon

Asking someone out on a date is a simple task that frequently becomes a terrifying conundrum of fear, self-doubt, and anxiety. It's full of tough decisions: How do I ask? In person? Phone call? Text? What do I say? Could this person be the person I end up spending the rest of my life with? What if this is the only person for me? What if I fuck it all up with the wrong message? Though technology has added a few new, modern quirks to this dilemma, asking a new person to go on a romantic outing has never been easy. It means declaring your attraction to someone and putting yourself out there in a huge way, while risking the brutal possibility of rejection - or, — Aziz Ansari

I have written about the "toxic church" I grew up in: a legalistic, angry, racist church in the South. I joke about being "in recovery" from that church, learning along the way that much presented as absolute truth was in fact wrong. As a result, when I began writing I saw myself as someone on the edge, more comfortable asking questions than proposing answers. My early book titles (Where Is God When It Hurts, Disappointment with God) betray what I struggled with and how I — Philip Yancey

Distinguish open-minded people from closed-minded people. Open-minded people seek to learn by asking questions; they realize that what they know is little in relation to what there is to know and recognize that they might be wrong. Closed-minded people always tell you what they know, even if they know hardly anything about the subject being discussed. They are typically made uncomfortable by being around those who know a lot more about a subject, unlike open-minded people who are thrilled by such company. — Ray Dalio