Questions Not Quotes & Sayings

The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask. — Nancy Newhall

Christianity is not a set of teachings to understand. It is a Person to follow. As he walked with Jesus, Andrew watched Jesus heal the sick, teach God's wisdom, and demonstrate God's power. Andrew not only learned about God; he actually experienced Him! Moments will come when you stand at a crossroads with your Lord. You will have a hundred questions for Him. Rather than answering the questions one by one, Jesus may say, "Put on your shoes, step out onto the road, and follow Me." As you walk daily with Him, Jesus will answer your questions, and you will discover far more than you even knew to ask. — Henry T. Blackaby

We tell ourselves how lovely it would be, would it not, if there were a God who created the universe and benign Providence, a moral world order, and life beyond the grave, yet it is very evident, is it not, that all of this is the way we should inevitably wish it to be. And it would be even more remarkable if our poor, ignorant bondsman ancestors had managed to solve all these difficult cosmic questions. — Sigmund Freud

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

If you don't ask the right questions, I can't give you the answers, and if you don't know the right question to ask, you're not ready for the answers — Ed Parker

Every time you do something, make something, it's final in a way, but it's not. It immediately raises a great set of questions. And if you become a question addict, which I am, you immediately have something you need to pursue. — Robert Irwin

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don't even arise. — Jean Baudrillard

Not all that Mrs. Bennet, however, with the assistance of her five daughters, could ask on the subject, was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley. They attacked him in various ways - with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises; but he eluded the skill of them all, and they were at last obliged to accept the second-hand intelligence of their neighbour, Lady Lucas. Her report was highly favourable. Sir William had been delighted with him. He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely agreeable, and, to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next assembly with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful! To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love; and very lively hopes of Mr. Bingley's heart were entertained. — Jane Austen

I'd just like to see a role for women where someone who isn't traditionally attractive is not portraying the best friend. You know, the character that only speaks in questions. 'Gee, are you gonna go out with him? Do you think I look fat?' — Martha Plimpton

Yes, Lise. You see, your question whether we do not despise that unhappy man by dissecting his soul was the question of a person who has suffered a lot. I'm afraid I don't know how to put it properly, but a person to whom such questions occur is himself capable of suffering. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Not long after the book came out I found myself being driven to a meeting
by a professor of electrical engineering in the graduate school I of MIT. He said that after reading the book he realized that his graduate students were using on him, and had used for the ten years and more he had been teaching there, all the evasive strategies I described in the book - mumble, guess-and-look, take a wild guess and see what happens, get the teacher to answer his own questions, etc.
But as I later realized, these are the games that all humans play when others
are sitting in judgment on them. — John Holt

In raising problems without solutions, in posing questions without answers, in retreating to the hermetic, cavernous abode of complaint, pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes - the crime of not pretending it's for real. Pessimism fails to live up to the most basic tenet of philosophy - the "as if." Think as if it will be helpful, act as if it will make a difference, speak as if there is something to say, live as if you are not, in fact, being lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied. — Eugene Thacker

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along. — Carl Sagan

I did not know that children think the hard questions they ask are easy and thus expect easy answers to them, and that they are disappointed when they get cautious, complex answers. — Bernhard Schlink

There are times in every person's life when they feel lonely, isolated, like maybe they don't belong. For adoptees, this is often exacerbated by the circumstances. Because you were given up, you have a built-in scapegoat; you can blame everything that you feel on the fact that you were adopted. But, I want you to know that this is a fallacy. Finding your biological parents will not fill in the void that you feel. You will get answers to your questions, but no one can fill in the missing pieces except for you. Before you go on a search, take the time to get to know yourself very well. Heal the hurts you've experienced. Acknowledge the past and how it has affected you. Become a whole person who is seeking roots, not a damaged person who is seeking fulfillment. — Janet Louise Stephenson

He wanted her to be good, to perform acts of service, come to mass, believe on Jesus, and not make his burden for her salvation too heavy. Between them was an unspoken agreement. He would do his duty, and she would do hers. For many years, this silent understanding between Julian and her priest had been unsatisfying. She craved more: a better understanding of God and God's will. But she had long known not to ask her many questions to her priest. She knew that he certainly would wish to hear nothing of her visions. — Amy Frykholm

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

Years ago when I served as a missionary, we had a visit from Dr. James E. Talmage of the Council of the Twelve
a great student, a great teacher, great theologian, and a great prophet.. Here we sat at his feet every idle minute that we could find and plied him with questions and listened to his counsel.
On one occasion he said to us, I want to tell you missionaries something. The day of sacrifice is not past! The time will come, yet, when many Saints and even Apostles will yet lose their lives in defense of the truth! — Harold B. Lee

The task is not so much to solve problems as to propose questions. — Donald Barthelme

Well, good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract. So automatically you're getting closer to potentially divine sources of interest because it is abstract. It's one of the only ways that a film actor can express himself in the abstract and have audiences still go along for the ride. They don't contend it. They accept it, that they're going to go places that are a bit more of the imagination, a bit more out there, and that's more and more where I like to dance. — Nicolas Cage

You are not singular in your suspicions that you know but little," he had told Caroline, in response to her quandary over the riddles of life. "The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know. . . . Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough. . . . So questions and so answers your affectionate grandfather." Adams — David McCullough

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

19. I wrote in my notebook that even if all the possible scientific questions are answered, our problem is still not touched at all. — E.L. Doctorow

People have explored these questions ['Why am I here?', 'What is life about?'] in poems, not that they found their answers, but in reading [poems], I think, you find a certain beauty in the questioning, and that is then poetry. — Gwee Li Sui

There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete. It is not a foot race, with a finish line ... People will always be waiting at a particular finish line: journalists with their cameras, impatient crowds eager to call the race, astounded to see the scientists approach, pass the mark, and keep running. It's a common misunderstanding, he said. They conclude there was no race. As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing. — Barbara Kingsolver

Kaidan had been captivated by the store owner's deep Texan accent. He asked a ridiculous number of questions just to keep the man talking. He then tried to repeat the man's accent when we got in the car. "Where are y'all young'uns headed? We got us some maps over yonder by them there h-apples."
I laughed out loud as he butchered the man's beautiful drawl.
"He did not say 'over yonder'!"
"I've always wanted to say that. I love Americans. You've got a nice little accent, though not nearly as wicked as his."
"I do?"
He nodded.
Aside from the occasional y'all, I didn't think I sounded Southern, but I guess it's hard to say about your own self. — Wendy Higgins

In this postcolonial context, my contention is that interreligious engagement is enhanced by renewed attention to the particularity of religious traditions. From a European (Anglican) standpoint, a revised particularist theology of religions is proposed as an appropriate Christian theology for our time that respects the integrity of Christianity and of other religious traditions. This particularist approach concerns Christian terms of engagement with other religious traditions, as these may be understood in Christian theological terms. Having regard to questions raised in the opening paragraph above, centred in trinitarian thinking, as capable of hospitality to the liberative and interreligious concerns of post-colonial, Asian and feminist theologies; respectful interreligious engagement and the pursuit of gender justice amid increasing global diversity need not require repudiation of orthodox trinitarian thought and its liturgical expressions. — Jenny Daggers

By the end of the session, I am no one at all. Haymitch started drinking somewhere around witty, and a nasty edge has crept into his voice. I give up, sweetheart. Just answer the questions and try not to let the audience see how openly you despise them. — Suzanne Collins

All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humor, of honor, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. — Rose Macaulay

And we've got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders, in terms of raising money - I hate to bring this up - are pushing hot buttons. — Tony Campolo

I'm not a sociologist, and the novel has often concerned itself with sociology. It's one of the generating forces that's made fiction interesting to people. But that's not my concern. I'm interested in psychology. And also certain philosophical questions about the world. — Jonathan Lethem

I could not but feel that it was ironical that the old relative should have spoken disparagingly of fawns as a class, sneering at their timidity in that rather lofty and superior manner, for he himself could have walked straight into a gathering of these animals and no questions asked. — P.G. Wodehouse

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

Raise Your Hand [10w]
Raise your hand to answer questions,
not to hit children. — Beryl Dov

Like my peers, I believed that the Bible was God's Word written down for me, answering all my questions about who God is and what God wants for my life, from the mundane to the ultimate. Or at least I knew that was what I needed to believe. But that was not what I found when I actually opened the Bible up and looked around inside. — Timothy Beal

Are you gay, Mr. Grey?"
He inhales sharply, and I cringe, mortified. Crap. Why didn't I employ some kind of filter before I read this straight out? How can I tell him I'm just reading the questions? Damn Kate and her curiosity!
"No Anastasia, I'm not." He raises his eyebrows, a cool gleam in his eyes. He does not look pleased. — E.L. James

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness. — George Bernard Shaw

We live by revelations, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget all the questions and we become like the pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men. — Madeleine L'Engle

And here's the shock
when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, you do not experience great joy and huge energy.
You are unhappy. Things get worse.
It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded.
And then all the cowards come out and say, 'See, I told you so.'
In fact, they told you nothing. — Jeanette Winterson

It is harder for queens, who have no luxury of meekness. History does not know how to reconcile our ambition or our power when we are strong enough to survive it. The priests have no tolerance for those of us driven by the divine madness of questions. And so our stories are blackend from the fire of righteous indignation by those who envy our imagined fornications. We become temptresses, harlots, and heretics.
I have been all and none of these, depending on who tells the tale. — Tosca Lee

This was because their English teachers would wince and cover their ears and give them flunking grades and so on whenever they failed to speak like English aristocrats before the First World War. Also: they were told that they were unworthy to speak or write their language if they couldn't love or understand incomprehensible novels and poems and plays about people long ago and far away, such as Ivanhoe. *** The black people would not put up with this. They went on talking English every which way. They refused to read books they couldn't understand - on the grounds they couldn't understand them. They would ask such impudent questions as, Whuffo I want to read no Tale of Two Cities? Whuffo? — Kurt Vonnegut

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

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

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

I got an e-mail from Venkat Kapoor: Mark, some answers to your earlier questions: No, we will not tell our Botany Team to "Go fuck themselves. — Andy Weir

He never answered questions
but when one flushes does that not mean "Yes"? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

One of the questions I have been asked many times since this story broke is this: Now that the facts are out there, what can we do? My answer, depressing and cynical as it may be, is always the same. Not much. Not now. And certainly not until the American public and its Congressional representatives regain control of the CIA and shred the curtain of secrecy that keeps us from discovering these crimes of state until its too late.
Perhaps when the government officials who presided over these outrages are safely in their crypts, and their apologists and cheerleaders are buried woth them, future historians can finally call these men to account for the miseries they caused. Even if that's all that ever happens, it will be fitting and just, because the favorable judgment of history is ultimately what they craved. — Gary Webb

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

I am often asked what keeps me going after all these years. I think it is the realization that there is no final struggle. Whether you win or lose, each struggle brings forth new contradictions, new and more challenging questions. As Alice Walker put it in one of my favorite poems: I must love the questions themselves as Rilke said like locked rooms full of treasures to which my blind and groping key does not yet fit.1 — Grace Lee Boggs

To love
to fall
is not a question. To touch
to kiss
to speak
those are questions. There is nothing worse than a ruined friendship. There is nothing better than a companion. Somewhere in between lies risk. Somewhere in between, lies. — David Levithan

On the ward there was hurt and pain so big and so deep that speech could not express it. I had been interested in philosophy, and suddenly philosophy came alive for me, for here the basic questions of human existence were not abstractions: they were embodied in human suffering — Frank X. Barron

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

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

Over the past couple of months, Chantel had become a pro at leading book discussions and inventing fun games and trivia questions that all related to that particular month's book selection. Although, last month's theme, dystopian and the book selection "Matched" by Allie Condie, had the retirement home director a little concerned when everyone wanted to stop taking their medications. Not... a good... thing! — JoJo Sutis

If the general picture of an expanding universe and a Big Bang is correct, we must then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big Bang? What happened before that? Was there a tiny universe, devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly created from nothing? How does that happen? In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? — Carl Sagan

What's on your shirt?" she asked suddenly. "Darth Vader," I answered briskly. For someone who held me in such obvious contempt, she asked a lot of questions. "So you're a Trekkie." This was a statement rather than a question. I cringed. "Not exactly." "I think Star Trek is silly." "Not — James Ramos

And yet, unlearn we must, for technology relentlessly transforms the playing field, changing not just the answers but the questions as well. — Louis Rosenfeld

All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence. — Luis Bunuel

The main Business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from Phaenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these, and to such like Questions. — Isaac Newton

I wish there were easy answers to people's health questions. There aren't. There are answers, all right, but they are not easy. — Andrew Saul

Guys have been having a lot of questions about whether or not I can play man-to-man, so I've been watching a lot of film lately. I'm trying to study tendencies of receivers that are already in the NFL, so I can have a jump on them once I get to that next level l so I can know what to look for and what to be prepared for. — Calvin Pryor

So the professor takes the student's point seriously, and responds with a concise but adequate argument in defence of the disputed equation. The professor tries hard to show no sign of being irritated by criticism from so lowly a source. Most of the questions from the floor will have the form of criticisms which, if valid, would diminish or destroy the professor's life's work. But bringing vigorous and diverse criticism to bear on accepted truths is one of the very purposes of the seminar. Everyone takes it for granted that the truth is not obvious, and that the obvious need not be true; that ideas are to be accepted or rejected according to their content and not their origin; that the greatest minds can easily make mistakes; and that the most trivial-seeming objection may be the key to a great new discovery. — David Deutsch

Allowances can always be made for your friends to disagree with you. Disagreement, vehement disagreement, is healthy. Debate is impossible without it. Evil does not question itself, only hope questions itself. Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken. Infallibility is a sin in any man. All laws can be broken and are. Often. Like when a bumblebee flies or an ancient regime is toppled. — Craig Ferguson

It's not rocking the boat, Dad. It's called communication. You're allowed to ask questions. Other people do it all the time. Other people don't live in fear of someone else's reactions. They don't relentlessly stress out about getting into trouble. — Koren Zailckas

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

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. — Rainer Maria Rilke

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else. — C.S. Lewis

Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognise it in case you travel
some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please
do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man
appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions,
you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me
word that he has come back. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Are our ways of teaching students to ask some questions always correlative with our ways of teaching them not to ask - indeed, to be unconscious of - others? Does the educational system exist in order to promulgate knowledge, or is its main function rather to universalize a society's tacit agreement about what it has decided it does not and cannot know? — Barbara Johnson

The Final Jeopardy! questions seem to be, by design, things you can't know. And so it's not about who knows them, but who can figure them out in thirty seconds. — Ken Jennings

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. — Ayn Rand

Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic but not enlightening. Instead, I ask, After evolution was discovered, how did religion and society respond? After cities were electrified, how did daily life change? After the airplane could fly from one country to another, how did commerce or warfare change? After we walked on the Moon, how differently did we view Earth? My larger understanding of people, places and things derives primarily from stories surrounding questions such as those. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not ultimately scientific questions. — Julian Baggini

I'm not a prophet or a teacher, I just ask questions. I don't think a writer should be a teacher, but should know how to pose the questions and explain the problems. — Vladimir Sorokin

Arrogance is inimical to prudential reasoning, to accepting that for all we know and learn we also accumulate ignorance of the questions we do not ask, the risks we do not and cannot comprehend. In short, arrogance is what causes us to ignore our fallibilities. — Ziauddin Sardar

Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not. — Connie Nielsen

My chest. All I'd wanted was for someone to be happy for me - happy with me, straight-up happy, not happy with questions, or happy with reservations, or happy but confused, or not happy at all ... and there was no one in my life, including my husband, who fit the bill. — Jennifer Weiner

By now, a younger generation of women participate in extremely lively debates in which questions of gender, sexuality and representation on screens and across media are approached from perspectives that had not yet been articulated in the 1970s. — Laura Mulvey

I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers: are you willing to enslave your children? You stare back with horror and indignation at such questions. But why, if slavery is not wrong to those upon whom it is imposed? — Angelina Grimke

Neo-Darwinian language and conceptual structure itself ensures scientific failure: Major questions posed by zoologists cannot be answered from inside the neo-Darwinian straitjacket. Such questions include, for example, 'How do new structures arise in evolution?' 'Why, given so much environmental change, is stasis so prevalent in evolution as seen in the fossil record?' 'How did one group of organisms or set of macromolecules evolve from another?' The importance of these questions is not at issue; it is just that neo-Darwinians, restricted by their resuppositions, cannot answer them. — Lynn Margulis

Sometimes it's better not to think in questions, but I can't seem to get out of the habit. — Jonathan Lethem

One of the hardest questions I have been asked is 'How will you manage the army if you are having menstrual cramps?' I have also been asked if I will have the courage to face criminals. My answer is that courage is not a matter of gender. — Josefina Vazquez Mota

I brought my first fall/winter line to New York, and it was confiscated by U.S. Customs. They asked, 'What is the value of this?' I said, 'I'm not so good with existential questions.' — John Malkovich

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

First off, faith is not about concrete answers, religious absolutes, creeds, or dogma. Faith is about the search for understanding, the raising of important questions, the open honesty of having doubt, and the realization that no one has it all completely right nor does any human, human religious teaching, or theology hold all the answers. — Jarrod Cochran

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

I feel a little uncomfortable at being asked the sorts of questions that other Catholics in public life tend not to be asked. — Tony Abbott

My voice was not heard, the questions were not asked that I wanted to see asked. — Bill Hicks

The actual legacy of Desert Storm was to plunge the United States more deeply into a sea of difficulties for which military power provided no antidote. Yet in post-Cold War Washington, where global leadership and global power projection had become all but interchangeable terms, senior military officers...were less interested in assessing what those difficulties might portend than in claiming a suitably large part of the action. In the buoyant atmosphere of that moment, confidence in the efficiency of American arms left little room for skepticism and doubt. As a result, senior military leaders left unasked questions of fundamental importance. What if the effect of projecting U.S. military power was not to solve problems, but to exacerbate them? What if expectations of doing more with less proved hollow? What consequences would then ensue? Who wear bear them? — Bacevich

Don't make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. - MIGUEL ANGEL RUIZ It's better to take the time to ask questions and to find the words to say what you really feel. Often we leave so much room for interpretation either because we are rushing or because we are afraid to speak the whole truth, but this is where miscommunications start. So even if you aren't sure about what someone means or how they feel, just ask them. Goal: When was the last time you assumed something and were wrong? Make a point to know the truth and not assume it. — Demi Lovato

Every damn one of us has faults. I feel like I was dealt an especially crummy hand."

"It got ugly. I became a man possessed by inner demons that could not be caged. I was desperate for answers that were never forthcoming. Jen avoided me like the plague. She was ever fearful of the questions that I refused to voice. All of my answers poured forth deliciously from the bottle. — Virginia Aird

Why was I chosen?'
'Such questions cannot be answered,' said Gandalf. 'You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible ... Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. The right local questions and answers will be the right global ones. The Amish question, what will this do to our community? tends toward the right answer for the world. — Wendell Berry

If explicit metadata is a real problem, it raises problems that just can't be solved. It's not that we're not good at it; it's the problems cannot be solved because we're not going to agree about these deep questions of how we organize. — David Weinberger

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

Addiction is more malleable than you know. When people come to me for therapy, they often ask me whether their behavior constitutes a real addiction (or whether they are really alcoholic, etc.). My answer is that this is not the important question. The important questions are how many problems is the involvement causing you, how much do you want to change it, and how can we go about change? — Stanton Peele

He had a particular facination with the I Ching, that art of tossing three coins three times and divining a pattern out of heads and tails. Pete would begin with questions:
What determined the pattern? Was it random? Was it a higher power? Was is mathematical? Wasn't poker based on mathematical probability and not just luck? Did that mean randomness was actually mathematical? And if the I Ching was governed by mathematics, hey, wouldn't that mean the I Ching was actually predictable, a prescribed answer? And if it was prescribed, did that mean that your life followed the I Ching, like some sort of equation? Or did the I Ching simply capture correctly what had already been determined as the next series of events in your life? — Amy Tan

What does a haunting feel like? Some say that they feel as though they have been watched. Others say that they have seen figures. Have you ever felt as though you are not alone in your house? Weird creaks? Footsteps in the dark? A laugh where there should never have been a voice. A man standing in your room? A figure? A shadow? A phantom? Your house may well be haunted, if you can say yes to any of those questions. The stories you are about to read are all true. All — B. Perry E. Scarze

As America is transformed from a 90 percent European American nation, as it was in the 1960s, to one where we will soon be a minority, should we not ask some pertinent questions. Is this racial diversity enriching, or will it be damaging to our social fabric? — David Duke