Quotes About Questioning

What is the matter with your master? George asked Dawtie as they bounced along toward Potlurg. God knows, sir. What is the use of telling me that? I want you to tell me what YOU know. I don't know anything, sir.

For my part, I would believe in no God rather than in such a God as is generally offered for believing in. How far those may be to blame who, righteously disgusted, cast the idea from them, nor make inquiry whether something in it may not be true, though most must be false, neither grant it any claim to investigation on the chance that some that call themselves his prophets may have taken spiritual bribes

When she went to church, nothing received her, nothing came near her, nothing brought her any message. Something was done, she supposed, that ought to be done—something she had no inclination to dispute, no interest in questioning; a certain good power called God, required from people, in return for the gift of existence, the attention of going to church; therefore she went sometimes.

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist? O'Brien: Of course he exists. Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me? O'Brien: You do not exist.

I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY

He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?

The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable-what then?

They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself

I understood HOW: I do not understand WHY.

A not-too-distant explosion shakes the house, the windows rattle in their sockets, and in the next room the class of 1964 wakes up and lets out a yell or two. Each time this happens I find myself thinking, Is it possible that human beings can continue with this lunacy very much longer? You know the answer, of course.

How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

I dreamed I dwelt in marble halls, And woke to find it true; I wasn't born for an age like this; Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one... He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, a lunatic. But the though of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him: the horror was that he might also be wrong.

He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

He held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed. - There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers? - Yes.

At any rate that year of reading novels was the only real education, in the sense of book–learning, that I've ever had. It did certain things to my mind. It gave me an attitude, a kind of questioning attitude, which I probably wouldn't have had if I'd gone through life in a normal sensible way.

Hayat? tan?mak yerine kendimden ÅŸüphe etmeyi öÄŸrendim.

Is this the baby? I said. Ma turned on me again. What do you think it is? she said. A midget that can't talk?

This is the hardest trial of my life," he confessed to the nurse, and in a spirit of rebellion this man, overweighted with care and sorrows, cried out: "Why is it? Why is it?

I think fiction at its best can serve as a moment of induced bafflement that calls into question our usual relation to things and reminds us that our minds, as nice as they are, aren't necessarily up to the task of living, and shouldn't get cocky.

Eskimo: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? Priest: No, not if you did not know. Eskimo: Then why did you tell me? Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

They felt neither joy, nor sadness, nor even boredom, but they did wonder sometimes if they still existed, if they really existed. They drew no special satisfaction from asking this deceptive question, beyond this: on occasions, it seemed to them, in a muddled and murky way, that the life they were leading was appropriate, adequate and, paradoxically, necessary

Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare. Make an inventory of your pockets, of your bag. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out. Question your tea spoons. What is there under your wallpaper? How many movements does it take to dial a phone number? Why? Why don't you find cigarettes in grocery stores? Why not?

It was hard to define the expression he found in Lulu's photographs, an expression she must have had in life. It wasn't sadness, but rather the sullen expression of a little girl who keeps to herself in the school playground and watches her schoolmates play. He would have been hard put to explain in what way she had been attractive, but he sensed it and he had often, in spite of himself, questioned such girls more gently than others.