Getting Answers Quotes & Sayings

To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered. — John Ruskin

Stressing the necessity of personal holiness should not undermine in any way our confidence in justification by faith alone. The best theologians and the best theological statements have always emphasized the scandalous nature of gospel grace and the indispensable need for personal holiness. Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit. God declares us just solely on account of the righteousness of Christ credited (imputed) to us (2 Cor. 5:21). Our innocence in God's sight is in no way grounded in works of love or acts of charity. Whereas a Catholic might answer the question "What must I do to be saved?" by saying, "Repent, believe, and live in charity,"7 the apostle Paul answers the same exact question with, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31). Getting right with God is entirely and only dependent upon faith.8 — Kevin DeYoung

One of the keys to success is to ask questions to people you fear getting answers from. — Robert J. Braathe

If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them. — Christopher McDougall

Well," she said, getting more comfortable, "Here's what I've got so far. I'm going to college and getting a Ph.D. in being awesome. That's a thing, right? Everyone will call me Dr. Kitten and pay me megabucks to diagnose all their problems. Because, of course, I will have all the answers. — Gena Showalter

When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it. — Brian Greene

If you dislike the answers you're getting from life, try asking better questions. — Steve Pavlina

Fuck this, Logan bit out before he shoved past the older Strattan. He started down the hallway and I went right after him. We weren't getting answers, not the ones we wanted. We'd find her ourselves. — Tijan

Philosophy is this amazing technique we've devised for getting reality to answer us back when we're getting it wrong. Science itself can't make those arguments. You actually have to rely on philosophy, on philosophy of science. — Rebecca Goldstein

The answer to having a better life is not about getting a better life, it's just about changing how we see the one we have right now. — Angel Kyodo Williams

There are peaks, there are valleys. But they're all kind of carved and smoothed out, and it feels like a low level of despair you live in. Where you're not getting any answers, but you're living OK. And you can smile at the office. You know? But it's a low level of despair. I was on Prozac for a long time. It may have helped me out of a jam for a little bit, but people stay on it forever. I had to get off at a certain point because I realized that, you know, everything's just OK. — Jim Carrey

And what of my extended family-birds, beasts, and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities-the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch? (pg. 98) — Yann Martel

But since the new Archchancellor never paid much attention to anything anyone said while he was eating, and Poons never noticed that he wasn't getting any answers, they got along quite well. — Terry Pratchett

The connection we feel to other people isn't bound by geography or space," Wells began. Although Clarke could see him trembling, his voice was strong and clear. "Sasha and I grew up in two different worlds, each of us wondering and dreaming about what was out there. I watched from above, never knowing for sure whether humans had survived here on Earth. I didn't know if we'd ever set foot on this planet again or if it would happen in my lifetime. And she looked up" - he pointed at the fading stars, still faintly visible in the dark blue sky - "and wondered if there was anyone up there. Had anyone survived the voyage into space? Had people managed to stay alive up there all these hundreds of years? For both of us, getting answers to our questions seemed so unlikely. But a million tiny forces moved us toward each other, and we got our answers. We found each other, even if it was just for a moment." Wells took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Sasha was my answer. — Kass Morgan

Order what you feel like eating," says your impatient dinner companion. But the problem is that you don't KNOW what you feel like eating. What you feel like eating is precisely what you are trying to figure out.
Order what you feel like eating" is just a piece of advice about the criteria you should be using to guide your deliberations. It is not a solution to your menu problem - just as "Do the right thing" and "Tell the truth" are only suggestions about criteria, not answers to actual dilemmas. The actual dilemma is what, in the particular case staring you in the face, the right thing to do or the honest thing to say really is. And making those kinds of decisions - about what is right or what is truthful - IS like deciding what to order in a restaurant, in the sense that getting a handle on tastiness is no harder or easier (even though it is generally less important) than getting a handle on justice or truth. — Louis Menand

I used to suspect that in the brain, time is its own representation. I now think the problem is so much more complicated. Initially I was rather impressed by the experiments showing that on complex problems, subjects who are distracted do better in getting an answer than either those who answer immediately or those who spend time reflecting on the problem. — Patricia Churchland

I'm beginning to appreciate getting answers out of Akil is like pushing water up hill. The second you think you have him, he slips around behind you, and the answers become questions all over again. — Pippa DaCosta

I talked to some vets in L.A. about what they go through and do they think about their experiences a lot. I got a wide array of answers. Some people get very emotional, which is understandable. Two of my best friends growing up are in the armed services, and getting to represent those guys was a big honor for me. — Austin Stowell

I read where they are going to limit debate in the Senate. It used to be that a man could talk all day, but now, as soon as he tells all he knows, he has to sit down. Most of these birds will just be getting up and nodding now. Why, some of them won't be able to answer roll call. — Will Rogers

I originally feared she might be dead, which felt like a sealed book that I would never be able to read. To have a birth mother die before getting any closure or answers seemed like it would be a cruel twist of fate. — Janet Louise Stephenson

I am an advocate for going to the doctor and going every year. I make sure that part of the checkup is spent talking about my heart with my doctor, and getting my numbers checked, and discussing the results. And I make sure that I understand the answers to my questions. — Andie MacDowell

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says 'I'm willing lord, I'll do whatever you want me to do' except that since there are no god's actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas.
The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude which is the hallmark of religion, but doubt.
Doubt is humble and that's what man needs to be considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong. — Bill Maher

Am I Getting Lazy? Am I Too Busy? Am I Becoming Arrogant? Am I Getting Timid? If you answer 'yes' to any one of these questions, that's your warning to Kick that attitude! — Roger Von Oech

There are only two things that determine whether you're old enough to do something -- whether you understand what the hell you're getting yourself into -- and whether you're willing to accept responsibility for it if it blows up in your face.
How many years you've been alive is ultimately meaningless -- except in as much as it gives parents a general sort of idea as to whether their child is likely to understand what they're getting themselves into. Small children, for instance, can't really comprehend shades of grey -- where a decision or choice can have different answers depending on the circumstances. For them, everything is black and white. — Midnight Blue

Bit if you look too long at the small rights, Jake - the ones that lie close at hand - it's easy to lose sight of the big ones that stand farther off. Things are out of joint - going wrong and getting worse. We see it all around us, but the answers are still ahead. — Stephen King

You are tired of always needing answers. Always answering questions. Always asking questions that demand answers. Pretending all the questions have to be answered. Pretending there are actually answers. And even getting paid to convince others they're true. That there is such a thing as right answers. — Thomas Lloyd Qualls

Answers seemed to float through the space around him. It was about love. It was about getting handed at conception a gift that sets you apart from everyone and you spend your whole life drifting through the margins of time, not understanding hours like everyone else seems to: glancing at wristwatches, checking timetables - you hardly know what it is people are trying to accomplish when they go through their days: morning, noon, evening, night. Wake up and sleep and wake up. This was about family, how blood superseded death; it was about trying your hardest, it was about snow. — Anthony Doerr

He discovered that the science he'd once thought of as the whole world of knowledge is only a branch of philosophy, which is far broader and far more general. The questions he had asked about infinite hypotheses hadn't been of interest to science because they weren't scientific questions. Science cannot study scientific method without getting into a bootstrap problem that destroys the validity of its answers. The questions he'd asked were at a higher level than science goes. And so Phaedrus found in philosophy a natural continuation of the question that brought him to science in the first place, What does it all mean? What's the purpose of all this? At — Robert M. Pirsig

We spent some time like that, me asking small questions, Toby giving me longer and longer answers, until we were simply talking, Toby asking me questions, too. — Lauren Wolk

The conclusion of Dowell's narrative offers not a resolution, so much as a plangent confirmation of complexities. While Ford would certainly have agreed with Dowell that it is a novelist's business to make a reader 'see things clearly', his interest in clarity had little to do with simplicity. There is no 'getting to the bottom of things', no triumphant answers to the epistemological muddle offered in this beautiful, bleak story - only a finer appreciation of that confusion. We may remove the scales from our eyes, Ford suggests, but only the better to appreciate the glass through which we see darkly. — Zoe Heller

He was talking about hire purchase. precredit cards. A different way of getting the poor into debt, but I think he was right. It was nice when ordinary people could take a holiday in Spain, of course, but easy credit is what started the cultural rot. Tourism depends on lots of people everywhere with loads of disposable wealth, which means all kinds of changes through a place a cultivates it. The real, messy, informative past disappears to be overlaid with bad fiction, with simplified folklore, easy answers. Memory needs to remain complex, debatable. Without those qualities it is mere nostalgic sentimentality. Commodified identity. Souls bough and sold. — Michael Moorcock

... now you, Miss, born with your own conscience, somewhere along the line fastened it like a barnacle onto your father's. As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man's heart, and a man's failings - I'll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes 'em like all of us. You were an emotional cripple, leaning on him, getting the answers from him, assuming that your answers would always be his answers. — Harper Lee

I was finally getting some answers, and I was scsred bleepless. — Kiersten White

I was wondering why I wasn't getting the right answers. It was then I realized that I wasn't asking the right people. — Mansi Soni

What is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities - the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net of there's so little fish to catch? — Yann Martel

Maybe getting more isn't the answer to life. Maybe it's giving. — Jen Lilley

Pleasant experiences don't make up for painful ones. No child, once painfully burned, would agree to be burned again, however enticing the reward. For all our talk and good intentions, there is much more stick than carrot in school, and while this remains so, children are going to adopt a strategy aimed above all else at staying out of trouble. How can we foster a joyous, alert, wholehearted participation in life if we build all our schooling around the holiness of getting 'right answers'? — John Holt

These days, everybody is supposed to be so intelligent: 'Isn't it terrible about Nixon getting elected?' 'Did you hear about the earthquake in Peru?' And you're supposed to have all the answers. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, like, 'What is bugging you, mister? Why can't you make it with your wife? Why do you lie awake all night staring at the ceiling? Why, why, why do you refuse to recognize you have problems and deal with them?'
The answer is that people have forgotten how to relate or respond. In this day of mass communications and instant communications, there is no communication between people. Instead it's long-winded stories or hostile bits, or laughter. But nobody's really laughing. It's more an hysterical, joyless kind of sound.
Translation: 'I am here and I don't know why. — John Cassavetes

Mathematics is much more than computation with pencil and a paper and getting answers to routine exercises. In fact, it can easily be argued that computation, such as doing long division, is not mathematics at all. Calculators can do the same thing and calculators can only calculate they cannot do mathematics. — John A. Van De Walle

Science doesn't care, by and large, what the answers are. It's only interested in getting the right answer. And journalism should be very much that way. — Scott Pelley

What sucks even more is getting hung up on the "what is he thinking and feeling?" shit. Does he miss me as much as I miss him? No. If he did, you'd know it by his actions. Is he seeing someone else? Maybe. Probably. Or at least he's planning on it. Again-it sucks, but if you get real about it you'll realize that knowing the answers to these questions still doesn't change the fact that your relationship didn't make the cut. — Greg Behrendt

But he has a clever way of getting answers with carefully worded statements. — Lauren DeStefano

No scientist, engineer, writer, psychologist, artist, or physician - and certainly no scholar, and therefore no serious university faculty member - pursues his or her vocation by getting right answers from a set of prescribed alternatives that trivialize complexity and ambiguity. — Leon Botstein

I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush ...
To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll ... More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and ... for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button? — Neil Gaiman

Before I sleep I normally lie awake and think of the future. I've resolved I can't understand life the way I can understand an equation or formula. For so long I've wanted to find concrete answers or die trying. It's hard at first to find comfort in not knowing or to make peace with it. But I think it is the only way to make it in this life. Getting stuck on a question only makes me estranged from the world. — Shane Crash

Sex is a form of exploration; it is asking questions and getting answer — Bryant McGill

The great questions are those an intelligent child asks and, getting no answers, stops asking. — George Wald

What would the masters do?
when people arn't successful, they sometimes wonder, why not? they get answers, then they wonder why those answers don't seem to meet their needs. they get the wrong answers, and they get upset about it. perhaps they're really getting the right answers, but answering the wrong questions.
too many people ask nothing but "Why" questions.
they analyze and analyse problems - but no solution. "you can analyse a glass of water and you're left with a lot of chemical components, but nothing you can drink".
"Why?" questions can drive us crazy. "What?" questions drive us sane.
What questions lead us to practical solutions. — Peter McWilliams

Rachel? my dad prompts.
Do I have to...?"
His stern expression answers my question
Fine. I'm grateful that the Native Americans are finally getting revenge on the white man for destroying their culture, by building megacasinos. — Melissa Schorr

I knew I should believe him, as he taught at Oxford, but his answers did not feel complete. It was like having a meal and not getting quite enough to eat. — Tracy Chevalier

I ask a lot because I'm very curious - especially about ex-girlfriends. I'm pretty good at getting the answers, too. — Brittany Murphy

The best way to discover the true heart of God is to study the life of Jesus and develop a greater understanding of His ways through personal interactions with Him. That comes by spending a lot of time conversing with Him, asking questions, receiving answers and getting to know His heart. When we know the issues of His heart, we can more easily understand the meaning of the messages He gives us. — Praying Medic

According to the Bible, a genuine answer to prayer is getting what you ask for. — John R. Rice

Growing up we were secular Jews, but what I got out of Judaism at that time in my life was questions. Everything was a question. "Dad, is there a heaven? Is there a hell?" You never could get an answer. That informed a lot of my reasons for getting into Scientology, because they had all the answers. They said I was not my body, not my mind. I don't have a soul; I am an immortal soul. I've lived many lives and I'll live endlessly into the future, and as an immortal soul I have no gender. — Kate Bornstein

I told them we're tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we're for, I said, not just what we're against. We don't want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff - biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice - but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask. — Rachel Held Evans

"I'm really glad you found me," my voice cracking.
Simon squeezed my hand. His lips lowering to my ear, whispering, "I - "
He went rigid, head lifting.
"Hey, Simon," Tori said behind me.
"What is she doing here?"
Derek jabbed his thumb at me. "Ask her. I'm not getting any answers." — Kelley Armstrong

If you wonder what getting and keeping the right employees has to do with getting and keeping the right customers, the answer is everything. — Fred Reichheld

In ancient Greece, some people did that for a living. They would just sit on a tree branch or a stone bench and ponder, sometimes aloud. Some got answers and some got headaches. And now, in this new age of jet planes and pistachio ice-cream, we pondered over the same questions without getting the answers and maybe in five thousand years, some other kids will be sitting on roofs pondering the same all over again. Not far from the Shepherd's star, there was a discreet star, one who didn't shine too brightly. I had it named "Goddessa". It was mine. — Patric Juillet

Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Everything's still there. It happened, it was. But you know, it's bearable somehow. It's--it's bearable."..."Do you know why it's bearable now,...?"..."It's bearable, Jean Louise, because you are your own person now."..."...You were an emotional cripple, getting answers from him, leaning on him, assuming your answers would always be his answers."..."When you happened along and saw him doing something that seemed to you to be the very antithesis of his conscience--your conscience--you literally could not stand it. It made you physically ill. Life became hell on earth for you. You had to kill yourself, or he had to kill you to get you functioning as a separate entity. — Harper Lee

Investigate the faeries. Great. That was absolutely guaranteed to get complicated before I got any useful answers. If there was one thing faeries hated doing, it was giving you a straight answer, about anything. Getting plain speech out out of one is like pulling out teeth. Your own teeth. Through your nose. — Jim Butcher

Those who can't do, teach. And, as Woody Allen says, those who can't teach, teach gym. And, as I say, those who can't teach gym become experts. That's who we look to for answers these days-the people telling you how to make your marriage work. Men telling women how to raise their self-esteem. The only thing that cures everything is talking to people who have the same problem you do. The rest is just a moneymaking bullshit scheme that some asshole is getting rich on. — Roseanne Barr

Did you ever think you had all the answers when you were in the thick of something, but then when you take a step back, you realize you were so busy getting things done that you never stopped to ask yourself if it's what you really want to do? — Jana Deleon

In this world of human affairs there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental nor useful. It is impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy; and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact any talk at all from him is resented. Then he is at the unattractive, growing age. He grows out of his clothes with indecent haste; his voice grows hoarse and breaks and quavers; his face grows suddenly angular and unsightly. It is easy to excuse the shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even unavoidable lapses in a boy of fourteen. — Rabindranath Tagore

Too many whites are getting away with drug use ... Too many whites are getting away with drug sales ... The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river, too. — Rush Limbaugh

It's incredible. Nine? Wow. I just remember winning my first one, getting the medal and the plate, the pin with the diamond for first place. My ninth title, I have no answer for that because I never thought it would be possible. — Michelle Kwan

That's all managing is: just coming up with the right questions and getting the right answers. — Jack Welch