Powerful Questions Quotes & Sayings

Means of knowing. I am certain of this, for I have witnessed it myself. When I swung myself into the fire as a young man, I saw that the storehouses of the human mind are rarely ever fully opened. When we open them, nothing remains unrevealed. When we cease all argument and debate - both internal and external - our true questions can be heard and answered. That is the powerful mover. That is the book of nature, written neither in Greek nor in Latin. That is the gathering of magic, and it is a gathering that, I have always believed and wished, can be shared." "You speak in riddles," Alma said. "And you speak too much," Ambrose replied. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I want you to know that I remember the conversations we had in Year Twelve, when you told me you wanted to do a cultural studies degree because you believed in trade, not aid, and you believed that the only way was to ask the questions and listen to the needs of the people and I remember thinking that exact moment, I want to change the world with her. And I remember feeling that again in Georgie's attic. That's a pretty powerful gift you have there, Ms. Finke. To make the laziest guy around want to change the world with you. So next time you remember standing in your bedroom naked, know that it is the most amazing view from any angle, especially the one where we get to see inside.
Love always,
Always,
Tom — Melina Marchetta

So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. — Alexander Hamilton

Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction - so easy to lapse into - that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us. — Robert Macfarlane

High SQ demands the most intense personal integrity. It demands that we stand open to experience, that we recapture our ability to see life and others afresh, as though through the eyes of a child, to learn how to tap into our intuition and visualization, as a powerful means of using our inner knowing to "make a difference." It demands that we cease to seek refuge in what we know and constantly explore and learn from what we do not know. It demands that we live the questions rather than the answers. — Danah Zohar

I saw a picture of you and Vincent in a 1968 newspaper that said you died in a fire," I said, turning to Ambrose.
He nodded at me with a little smile, urging me on.
"So how can you be here now?"
"Well, I'm glad we're starting with the easy questions," he said, stretching his powerful arms and then leaning toward me. "The answer would be ... because we're zombies!" and he let out a horrible groan, stretching his mouth open and baring his teeth as he curled his hands into claws.
Seeing my terrified expression, Ambrose began cracking up and slapping his knee with his hand. "Just kidding," he cackled, and then, calming down, looked at me sedately. "But no, seriously. We're zombies."
"We are not zombies!" said Charlotte, her voice rising with annoyance. — Amy Plum

Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deep - for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said she: "Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?" "Yes'm." "Powerful warm, warn't it?" "Yes'm." "Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?" A bit of a scare shot through Tom - a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said: "No'm - well, not very much. — Mark Twain

Who is the pioneer of modern journalism? Not Hemingway who wrote of his experiences in the trenches, not Orwell who spent a year of his life with the Parisian poor, not Egon Erwin Kisch the expert on Prague prostitutes, but Oriana Fallaci who in the years 1969 to 1972 published a series of interviews with the most famous politicians of the time. Those interviews were more than mere conversations; they were duels. Before the powerful politicians realized that they were fighting under unequal conditions
for she was allowed to ask questions but they were not
they were already on the floor of the ring, KO'ed. — Milan Kundera

If love doesn't triumph, it ought to. For love is the one thing we have that feels more powerful than even death; the only respite from life's wretched absurdity. The magic of love is not that it contains all the answers, it's that it eliminates the need for so many pressing questions. For love makes us feel like gods
and that's what we're really after, isn't it? — Jonathan Hull

All I ask is for powerful people to respond honestly to the questions, and if they can't, explain why. — Bill O'Reilly

she prays to feel as powerful
as she might if God sang silent
words into her ear and answered
all the rattling questions
now — Beth Morey

I was lucky. I had some really good people that were just here there and wherever who would come into my life that I felt would answer questions. I mean, I had some very powerful questions myself for what this earth was all about. — Linda Blair

Another way to show interest is to pretend you're conducting a job interview or review. Ask follow up questions, praise accomplishments and recognize efforts. A word of caution: this technique does not work as well with wealthy or powerful people. They are used to receiving praise and accolades and are more guarded about opening up to this technique. — Gabriel Aluisy

We are altering the most basic forces of the planet's surface - the content of the sunlight, the temperature and aridity - and that brings out the most powerful questions about who is in charge. If you wanted to give a name to this theological problem, I think you could say that we are engaged in decreation. — Bill McKibben

Daniel needing to marry only further proved his importance to his clan. Was it possible a powerful chief stood before her? Myra cocked her head, more questions filling her mind. "Why are ye going to the Bruce?" Daniel shrugged. "I like to fight." Myra laughed. "At least ye're honest. I'll be a widow before long." He grinned and winked, thrilling her to her toes. — Eliza Knight

Maybe the questions are more powerful than the answers. — Dan Brown

The art which speaks to a universal audience concerns itself with the 'big' questions of life and death, and delivers its message with unrelenting and powerful emotion. — Scott Kahn

This is a hard question. But as women we have a right to ask the hard questions. The only way I have ever understood, broken free, emerged, healed, forgiven, flourished, and grown powerful is by asking the hardest questions and then living into the answers through opening up to my own terror and transmuting it into creativity. I have gotten nowhere by retreating into hand-me-down sureties or resisting the tensions that truth ignited. — Sue Monk Kidd

Despite being some of the most powerful people in the world, the top men in the Kremlin were scared of stepping out of line. Marxism-Leninism answered all questions, so the eventual decision would be infallibly correct. Anyone who had argued for a different outcome was therefore revealed to be culpably out of touch with orthodox thinking. Dimka sometimes wondered if it was this bad in the Vatican. — Ken Follett

The career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who headed the Manhattan Project, draws such questions to a focus that resembles the bead of a laser-gunsight on a victim's breastbone. It was Oppenheimer whom the public lionized as the brains behind the bomb; who agonized about the devastation his brilliance had helped to unleash; who hoped that the very destructiveness of the new "gadget," as the bombmakers called their invention, might make war obsolete; and whose sometime Communist fellow-traveling and opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb - a weapon a thousand times more powerful than the bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki - brought about his political disgrace and downfall, which of course have marked him in the eyes of some as all the more heroic, a visionary persecuted by warmongering McCarthyite troglodytes. His legacy, of course, is far more complicated. — Algis Valiunas

A small group is powerful in matters relating to a particular industry, because then it is normally the only organized force, but it is less formidable when questions which divide the entire nation are involved, for then it must take on organized labor and other large organized groups. The business community in the aggregate is for this reason not uniquely effective as a pressure group. — Mancur Olson

Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable - the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, — Alexander Hamilton

The questions they ask usually in the polls is: do you support the President's attempt to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein? ... If you ask a question like: do you support the dropping of powerful explosives upon the heads of totally innocent men, women and children, demolishing their homes and their schools and their hospitals, are you in favour of that? That would change the answers, I think, quite a bit. — William Blum

If one meets a powerful person - Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates - ask them five questions: 'What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?' If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system. — Tony Benn

I want you to feel empowered to explore those questions without worrying that there is some secret answer somewhere resting with the author. The author does not have the answer. The author, despite what our culture tells us, is not the powerful one. The reader is the powerful one. The author scratches some symbols onto a page. The reader makes it live. — John Green

Evolution is one of the most powerful and important ideas ever developed in the history of science. Every question it raises leads to new answers, new discoveries, and new smarter questions. The science of evolution is as expansive as nature itself. It is also the most meaningful creation story that humans have ever found. — Bill Nye

In examining witnesses, I learned to ask general questions so as to elicit details with powerful sensory associations: the colors, the sounds, the smells that lodge an image in the mind and put the listener in the burning house. — Sonia Sotomayor

Empty heads, cognitive science has taught us, learn nothing. The powerful cultural and personal flexibility of our species is owed at least in part to our starting off so well-informed; we are good learners because we know what to pay attention to and what questions are the right ones to ask. — Paul Bloom

The most killer questions in sales: "Mr. Jones, when I say (insert your product, your company, or anything you want an opinion about here) what one word comes to mind?" This is the most powerful question because it not only gives you top of mind awareness (the customer "hot button"), it also tells you their attitude towards it. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Is there a God or not?" "Is God good or not?" "Does he love me or not?" "Is God all powerful or not?" "Am I a blessing or a burden?" "Am I alone or is he with me?" And all of these questions were rooted in this one: "Do I have a heavenly Father or am I an orphan? — Lacey Sturm

Becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens. — Katherine Boo

The most powerful way to control your focus is through the use of QUESTIONS — Tony Robbins

Everything on our earth - both the simple and the complicated questions, both the little human problems and the challenges of finding the great path to God, all the secrets of the past, the present, and the future ages - all can be resolved only by such mysterious, ineffably beautiful and omnipotent humility. And even if we cannot understand its truth and meaning, and even if it seems for now that we are not ready for this mysterious and all-powerful humility, nonetheless, that humility by itself will reveal itself to us through those incredible persons who are capable of possessing it. — Tikhon Shevkunov

She is such a blade - -beautiful, powerful, and deadly to her enemies- - as well as her bond-mate due to her fatal flaw. The questions are - How deep is her flaw and can it be healed? After all, a mortal is not a mearcair blade to be discarded if forged improperly. (Kagan Donmall regarding Tessa Montgomery) — Jacqueline Patricks

Of the twelve, the most powerful questions (to employees, guaging their satisfaction with their employers) are those witha combination of the strongest links to the most business outcomes (to include profitability). Armed with this perspective, we now know that the following six ar ethe most powerful questions:
1) Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2) Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3) Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4) In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
5) Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6) Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
As a manager, if you want to know what you should do to build a strong and productive workplace, securing 5s to these six questions would be an excellent place to start. — Marcus Buckingham

One of the most powerful ways to "program" your brain is the kaizen technique of asking small questions. — Robert Maurer

I was brought up in a very religious household and did a lot of praying throughout a big part of my life and always thought of God as being not only a powerful father figure and the ruler of all time and dimension but also as a friend with whom I could chat and ask questions to and get advice from. — Paul Feig

So, to return to the title chapter, what is the point of learning statistics? To summarize huge quantities of data. To make better decisions. To answer important social questions. To recognize patterns that can refine how we do everything from selling diapers to catching criminals. To catch cheaters and prosecute criminals. To evaluate the effectiveness of policies, programs, drugs, medical procedures, and other innovations. And to spot the scoundrels who use these very same powerful tools for nefarious ends. — Charles Wheelan

The Oswald shadings, the multiple images, the split perceptions - eye color, weapons caliber - these seem a foreboding of what is to come. The endless fact-rubble of the investigations. How many shots, how many gunmen, how many directions? Powerful events breed their own network of inconsistencies. The simple facts elude authentication. How many wounds on the President's body? What is the size and shape of the wounds? The multiple Oswald reappears. Isn't that him in a photograph of a crowd of people on the front steps of the Book Depository just as the shooting begins? A startling likeness, Branch concedes. He concedes everything. He questions everything, including the basic suppositions we make about our world of light and shadow, solid objects and ordinary sounds, and our ability to measure such things, to determine weight, mass and direction, to see things as they are, recall them clearly, be able to say what happened. — Don DeLillo

And here, at the last, as we sit here among the questions still unanswered and the path you must walk ahead, I pray for your journey as it unfolds into the unknown.
I know you feel a bit out of sorts. We all do sometimes. It's okay. Don't be afraid.
You are so very loved. I pray you would remember it, know it, live it, breathe it, rest in it: beloved.
In the mighty and powerful name of Jesus, Amen. — Sarah Bessey

While the West had lulled itself to sleep with the comforting doctrine of man's achievements, a great revolution had been in progress in Russia. The hammer pounded and the sickle gleaned until a new social order called Communism emerged as one of the most powerful ideologies of all time. It challenged every concept man had ever held. It threatened the life of the whole world. It became the greatest challenge Christianity had faced in 2,000 years. It was a fanatic religion that asked questions and demanded answers. — Billy Graham

O Me! O life! ... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless - of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light - of the objects mean - of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all - of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest - with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here - that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. — Walt Whitman

But here is a sad truth: Our world is full of men and women who do not like powerful women. We have been so conditioned to think of power as male that a powerful woman is an aberration. And so she is policed. We ask of powerful women: Is she humble? Does she smile? Is she grateful enough? Does she have a domestic side? Questions we do not ask of powerful men, which shows that our discomfort is not with power itself, but with women. We judge powerful women more harshly than we judge powerful men. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie