quotations about questions
Never surrender a good question for a mere answer.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Living by Questions", Oprah
A man becomes learned by asking questions.
AHMED VESIK
attributed, Day's Collacon
Everything in this world can volunteer some reply, what takes up time is posing the questions.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without ever having asked a clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
Well, it's not so easy to give an answer when you ask a stupid question!
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
"The Garden of Paradise"
Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.
KARL JASPERS
Way to Wisdom
Where the question is a jest, the fittest answer is a scoff.
ARCHIMEDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
attributed, 101 Best Ways to Get Ahead
To a man full of questions make no answer at all.
PLATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
attributed, Reader's Digest, Volume 37, 1940
Why ... did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions -- not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
An able man is not ashamed to put questions both to the humble and the wise.
TSHANG
attributed, Day's Collacon
No one has the answer: we are answer and question.
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Family and Other Essays
Remember, an easy question can have an easy answer. But a hard question must have a hard answer. And for the hardest questions of all, there may be no answer -- except faith.
CHARLES SHEFFIELD
Brother to Dragons
For a long time I was timid in the presence in learning, and I fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing to my own gross ignorance, but this thing was not a joke or a pastime with me, but the business of my life, and I was at last forced, willy-nilly, to the conclusion that these questions of mine were the only legitimate questions underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that was in fault in putting them, but science in pretending to have an answer for them.
LEO TOLSTOY
A Confession
A civil question deserves a civil answer.
MARTIN H. MANSER
The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs
There are some questions that shouldn't be asked until a person is mature enough to appreciate the answers.
ANNE BISHOP
Daughter of the Blood
Whatever you eye falls on -- for it will fall on what you love -- will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go.
MARY ROSE O'REILLEY
The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of A Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
Men certainly have a way of keeping women in suspense, and an unwillingness to answer questions even when we ask them.
ELIZA LESLIE
The Escorted Lady
No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Our Theatres in the Nineties