Quotes About Questioning

Am I crazy?" she asked. "I feel like I am sometimes." "Maybe," he said, rubbing her forehead. "But don't worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It's your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.

So then you ask her when her birthday is, and she says, "Hmm, I don't really remember being born . . ." And if you pester her some more and ask her how long she's been alive, she says, "I've always been here as far as I remember.

When everything you think you own—your belongings, your life—can be swept away in an instant, you must ask yourself, What is real?

His story was moving and tragic, too. Although he claimed not to understand matters of human conscience, it was precisely his own conscience that led him to question the status quo, and which would cost him his job later on.

Are you a male or a female or somewhere in between?

So of course I feel angry, I said, angrily. What do you expect? It was a stupid thing to ask. Yes, she agreed. It was a stupid thing to ask. I see that you're angry. I don't need to ask such a stupid thing to understand that. So why did you ask? Slowly she turned herself around, pivoting on her knees, until finally she was facing me. I asked for you, she said. For me? So you could hear the answer.

De toda esa miríada negra, cabalgándose y atropellándose, hacía una forma informe e inquietante, y me di cuenta, de súbito, que mi cuerpo estaba cubierto de piel de gallina. En la oscura pantalla, mis ojos turbios se reblandecieron como metal a punto de derretirse, y en voz baja le dije a aquel yo al borde de la licuefacción: '¿quién eres tú? ¿de qué estás hecho?

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.

Most Christians have at some point faced the question, "Which church should I attend?" After reading Attack Upon Christendom the question becomes, "Is it OK for a Christian to go to church?

Doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world.

De omnibus dubitandum est

Make no mistake- you can change things. Question everything, take nothing for granted; argue with all received ideas, don't respect what does not deserve respect; speak your mind, don't censor yourself; use your imagination and express what it tells you to express. These are the weapons of the mind.

Why, alone of all the more-than-five-hundred-million, should I have to bear the burden of history?

He wanted, for example, to investigate why one should hold fast to a religion not because it was true but because it was the faith of one's fathers. Was faith not faith but simple family habit? Maybe there was no true religion but only this eternal handing down. And error could be handed down as easily as virtue. Was faith no more than an error of our ancestors?

Their curled bodies are a pair of question mark at the end of the puzzling sentence of the day

What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief. Doubt.

Here in America, the only words that didn't exist, the only unspeakable words, were "I'm not sure about any of this. I'm having second thoughts.

nothing is sacred in and of itself...Ideas, texts, even people can be made sacred... the act of making sacred is in truth an event in history. It is the product of the many and complex pressures of the time in which the act occurs. And events in history must always be subject to questioning, deconstruction, even to declaration of their obsolescence

It is therefore in the very nature of faith to serve as an impediment to further inquiry.

Until we question our stressful thoughts, we remain victims of the images in our head.

I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.

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

The most successful people are mavericks who aren't afraid to ask why, especially when everyone thinks it's obvious.