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
Suppose that you decide to have the entire "curriculum" consist of questions. These questions would have to be worth seeking answers to not only from your point of view but, more importantly, from the point of view of the students. In order to get still closer to reality, add the requirement that the questions must help the students to develop and internalize concepts that will help them to survive in the rapidly changing world of the present and future.
NEIL POSTMAN & CHARLES WEINGARTNER
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
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
The ignorant start questions which have been already answered thousands of years ago by the wise.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The power to question is the basis of all human progress.
INDIRA GANDHI
attributed, Misbehave: Speak Truth to Power
Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.
SUSANNE LANGER
Feeling and Form
The answer is a mirror of the question.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.
ANNE RICE
The Vampire Lestat
Well, it's not so easy to give an answer when you ask a stupid question!
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
"The Garden of Paradise"
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
Questions are dangerous, for they have answers.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
A man becomes learned by asking questions.
AHMED VESIK
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
The only stupid question is the one that is not asked.
SAM HO
Operations and Quality Management
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
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
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
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
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