Universal Questions Quotes & Sayings

Of the many species that have existed on earth
estimates run as high as fifty billion
more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. In the light of this, it is sometimes joked that all of life today amounts to little more than a rounding error.
more than a rounding error. — Elizabeth Kolbert

I'm not one of those people that has to look myself up every five seconds to see what people are saying. That's been really helpful. I mean, you get thousands of compliments, and then one person will say something negative - and that's all you'll remember, that one person. — Carmen Electra

The Roman world, like an aged man, wished to dwell in peace and tranquillity and to enjoy in philosophic detachment the good gifts which life has to bestow upon the more fortunate classes. But new ideas disturbed the internal conservatism, and outside the carefully guarded frontiers vast masses of hungry, savage men surged and schemed. The essence of the Roman peace was toleration of all religions and the acceptance of a universal system of government. Every generation after the middle of the second century saw an increasing weakening of the system and a gathering movement towards a uniform religion. Christianity asked again all the questions which the Roman world deemed answered for ever, and some that it had never thought of. — Winston S. Churchill

You shouldn't be afraid of me because I'm a vampire. You ought to be scared because you just trash-talked my girlfriend to her face.
Michael — Rachel Caine

Slowly, slowly, with a drugged, fathomless calm, Henry bent and picked up a handful of dirt. He held it over the grave and let it trickle from his fingers. Then, with terrible composure, he stepped back and absently dragged the hand across his chest, smearing mud upon his lapel, his tie, the starched immaculate white of his shirt.
I stared at him. So did Julian, and Francis, and the twins, with a kind of shocked horror. He seemed not to realise he had done anything out of the ordinary. He stood there perfectly still, the wind ruffling his hair and the dull light glinting from the rims of his glasses. — Donna Tartt

Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises - from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics - seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole. The ultimate outcome will be an increase of radical skepticism that questions the ability of science to address even the questions legitimately within its sphere of competence. One longs for a new Enlightenment to puncture the pretensions of this latest superstition.
[The folly of scientism] — Austin L. Hughes

My parents always told me that life is about asking questions which I didn't understand that until more recently. See the truth is like life is like a collection of questions really if you think about it. Or at least the ones we choose to acknowledge. See within those questions that we choose to acknowledge we answer them for ourselves because we have the need to and in those answers I believe that we find our own meaning, we find our own definition, we define what is we stand for, you know what I'm saying; who we are as people, as individuals, what we believe in. And that's how we celebrate our individuality. Now you would think that individuality would separate us but on the contrary the truth is we all answer pretty much the same basic questions for ourselves, they're not complicated questions you know. They're very simple, basic universal questions and that's why I wrote this song — Miguel

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

Life and death issues are a universal concern. A person can learn about life by investigating the psychological and social aspects related to dying. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Give me a sword and I will slay a man, give me a voice and I will slay a country. — Konrad

Of all the universal lies she accepted unquestioningly, the happy ending was the most absurd. The hero and heroine lived happily ever after, and the ending seemed indisputable, definitive. No questions asked about how long love or happiness lasts in that 'forever' that can be divided into lifetimes, years, months. Even days — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I am fully assured, that no general method for the solution of questions in the theory of probabilities can be established which does not explicitly recognize, not only the special numerical bases of the science, but also those universal laws of thought which are the basis of all reasoning, and which, whatever they may be as to their essence, are at least mathematical as to their form. — George Boole

The moral landscape is the framework I use for thinking about questions of morality and human values in universal terms. — Sam Harris

Nobody gets out of this life alive, or so they say. Really? True, the body disintegrates, but is that all? Might we in fact "get out alive"? Might our awareness continue? We all know somebody who died. Where did they go, or more basically, what is even meant by "they" and "where"? Can they, do they, interact with us? Might they be stuck in a new version of earthly reality, unable to move on and needing someone to help them do so? Since death is the most universal human experience aside from birth, these are important questions. — David Kowalewski

Mother humor is such a universal theme. I wrote a show called '25 Questions for a Jewish Mother.' I had people coming up to me after the show saying, 'I'm Baptist, and my mother is just like yours.' — Judy Gold

The whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions - electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us ... When we cease all argument and debate - both internal and external - our true questions can be heard and answered ... That is the gathering of magic. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In our vital need ... science has nothing to say to us. It excludes in principle precisely the question which man, given over in our unhappy times to the most portentous upheavals, finds the most burning: questions about the meaning or meaninglessness of this whole human existence. Do not these questions, universal and necessary for all men, demand universal reflections and answers based on rational insight? In the final analysis they concern man as a free, self-determining being in his behaviour toward the human and extrahuman surrounding world and free in regard to his capacities for rationally shaping himself himself and his surrounding world. — Edmund Husserl

Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction — Tash Aw

The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts. — G.K. Chesterton

Courage for the big troubles in life, lad' he'd say, 'and patience for the small. Be of good cheer. God is awake. — Louisa Young

The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. — Edmund Burke

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day - that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the dream of daily life. — Leo Tolstoy

There was no solution," Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina, "but the universal solution that life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day - that is forget oneself. — John Irving

I like films that deal with some of those questions that you can never answer: 'Why are we here? What's it about? What happens to us with the choices that we make? What are the ramifications for doing something right, or doing something wrong?' Those universal questions, I enjoy. — Dominic Monaghan

I have heard your orators speak on many questions. One among them the so-called vital question of money which is above all things the most coveted commodity but I, as a Jainist, in the name of my countrymen and of my country, would offer you as the medium of the most perfect exchange between us, henceforth and forever, the indestructible, the unchangeable, the universal currency of good will and peace, and this, my brothers and sisters, is a currency that is not interchangeable with silver and gold, it is a currency of the heart, of the good life, of the highest estate on the earth. — Virchand Gandhi

Shining with craving, his emerald gaze penetrated her soul. "I desire you so much". His whisper melted her heart. His soft touch set her ablaze. — Chris Lange

Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the opposite, posing questions and opening situations. — Robert McKee

Teamwork is the foundation of success. The three universal questions that an individual asks of his coach, player, employee, employer are: Can I trust you? Are you committed to excellence? And, do you care about me? — Lou Holtz

Bouncing is for balls.

-Tibby Rollins — Ann Brashares

People will continue to search for answers to universal and perplexing problems. But to find meaningful answers, one must first know what questions to ask. — Jacque Fresco

The secrets of the universe aren't really secrets. It's just that humanity is too subjugated by their blissful ignorance to ask the right questions. When you have all of the answers, but are unable to ask any questions to them, then all you have are secrets. — Lionel Suggs