quotations about questions
Questions are often more effective than statements in moving others. Or to put it more appropriately, since the research shows that when the facts are on your side, questions are more persuasive than statements, don't you think you should be pitching with questions?
DANIEL H. PINK
attributed, The Future of Strategy
Everything in this world can volunteer some reply, what takes up time is posing the questions.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
To a man full of questions make no answer at all.
PLATO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Where the question is a jest, the fittest answer is a scoff.
ARCHIMEDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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"
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
To stand in the midst of ... this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity in existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning ... that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human has this feeling just because he is human.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
attributed, The Gay Science
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
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
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
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
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
Questions are dangerous, for they have answers.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.
JOHN LOCKE
First Treatise of Government
Why are things beautiful? I don't know. That's a good question. Isn't it pleasing when you ask a question of a person, a teacher, or a speaker, and he or she says, That's a good question? Don't you feel good when that happens?
NICHOLSON BAKER
A Box of Matches
A civil question deserves a civil answer.
MARTIN H. MANSER
The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs
Are you going to answer my questions, or do I have to whack you with a stick until delicious candy surprises fall out?
MOLLY HARPER
Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs