56 Questioning Quotes

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

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.

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

Each generation's job is to question what parents accept on faith, to explore possibilities, and adapt the last generation's system of values for a new age.

If we say that no one's out there And we say we're goin' nowhere And we avoid the question Is this all that it means?

The wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask - Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence hollering, What's it for?

Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

'I wonder why he shot me,'

Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect. No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination.

To believe blindly is to degenerate the human soul. Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. 'Izzy,' she would say, 'did you ask a good question today?' That difference-asking good questions-made me become a scientist.

Why are they so stupid? Not to know the truth when they hear it? This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question.

Why wont anyone ever answer my questions? Because you never stop asking them and especially because you keep asking them even when it's clear that nobody knows the answers Well how do I know that they don't know the answer unless I ask?

I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious.

Previously I did not understand why I got no answer to my question; today I do not understand how I could believe I was capable of asking. But I didn't really believe, I only asked.

We seem to be unable to allow ourselves the dignity of engaging in this sort of straightforward reconsideration of our acts. After all, questioning is the great strength of democracy; the ability to doubt without losing face. Instead we charge on, chanting 'Free Trade - Prosperity', the way in 1212 on the Children's Crusade they must have chanted 'Jesus and Jerusalem!' Most were snatched up before they could reach the coast and sold into slavery or sent across the Mediterranean, again to be slaves.

Of course you know what a Snark is? If you do, please tell me: for I haven't an idea what it is like.

Jesus died to save men -- a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?

heaven, is this heaven where we are?

I don't pretend to think I'm as smart as Noam Chomsky, but I'm smart enough to ask him questions. --Bill Maher, February 27, 2007 [269]

What games was god playing with her life?

What did it mean? A stick sharpened at both ends. What was there in that?

Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go? Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day, Festively she puts forth in trim array.

Here's what I've started thinking: All the wonder of God happens right above our arithmetic and formula. The more I climb outside my pat answers, the more invigorating the view, the more my heart enters into worship.

'What's so silly about the pizza?' (from 'Silly Food')

'What is all this commotion? Gookin, why do you lie among the cheeses?' Twango from Cugel's Saga

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about..

Christianity has a built-in defense system: Anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it - and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist - is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field and just go, 'Show me.'

Oh, beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love?

The religion of Christianity Is mixed of sweetness and cruelty Reject this Sweetness, for she wears A smoky dress out of hell fires.

Who? Who?

Que sais-je?