Quotes About Questioning

God. That bastard, he doesn't exist. —Samuel Beckett

I wonder if the fact that I left the faith is somehow seen as threatening, at least among people who have a gnawing suspicion

the fact that I left the faith is somehow seen as threatening, at least among people who have a gnawing suspicion, which they never explicitly acknowledge to themselves, that their own faith may need to be reexamined.

especially what it has to say to me personally or to my society.

I could no longer reconcile my faith in God with the state of the world that I saw all around me.

Hawthorne, like most of my professors at Wheaton, was a committed evangelical Christian. But he was not afraid of asking questions of his faith. At the time, I took this as a sign of weakness (in fact, I thought I had nearly all the answers to the questions he asked); eventually I saw it as a real commitment to truth and as being willing to open oneself up to the possibility that one's views need to be revised in light of further knowledge and life experience.

you wondered why in the hell the world had been created in the first place. Good things were in short supply, and so much of the rest was downright rancid.

She had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there was nothing physically wrong. She hurt all the time. How much of it was her fault? That question haunted her.

You can't blame human nature, and there was nothing more human than curiosity.

Bill thought, why are they crying so far apart?

It's like practicing pole vaulting your entire life, and then getting to the olympics and saying, 'what the hell did I want to jump over this stupid bar for?

When armed squads confiscated eight bulls, seven cows, four calves, three horses, thirty-six tons of wheat, a cart, a threshing machine, and a mill from B. Bondarenko of Aktyubinsk province, while sentencing him to a year in prison, he asked the presiding judge to provide an explanation for the basis of his conviction because he was not guilty of a crime.

Tholey stressed the importance of asking "the critical question"—"Am I dreaming or not?"—as frequently as possible (at least five to ten times a day) and in every situation that seems dreamlike.

One evening, after a Dharma talk at the Cambridge Zen Center, a student asked Seung Sahn Soen-sa, "What is love?" Soen-sa said, "I ask you: what is love?" The student was silent. Soen-sa said, "This is love." The student was still silent. Soen-sa said, "You ask me: I ask you. This is love.

If you don't let a teacher know what level you are -- by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance -- you will not learn or grow

Changing a planning tool or a method won't create significant change in the results we're getting in our lives—although the implied promise is that it will. It's not a matter of controlling things more, better, or faster; it's questioning the whole assumption of control.

Expand Perspective Sometimes we are knocked out of our left brain environment and thought patterns and into the right brain by an unplanned experience. The death of a loved one, a severe illness, a financial setback, or extreme adversity can cause us to stand back, look at our lives, and ask ourselves some hard questions: "What's really important? Why am I doing what I'm doing?

He had no idea where he was headed, but he knew he had to go. On each breath that panted through his locked teeth, he whispered hate as if it were a question.

Are you alive?" "Perhaps. While I have purpose, I move and speak. My eyes behold. Is this life?

One day, soon after the Buddha's enlightenment, a man saw the Buddha walking toward him. The man had not heard of the Buddha, but he could see that there was something different about the man who was approaching, so he was moved to ask, "Are you a god?

TRAVIS: I never said I like boys! GORDO: Ever beat off to Penthouse? TRAVIS: No. GORDO: Ever collect baseball cards? TRAVIS: No. GORDO: How old is Barbra Streisand? TRAVIS: 36. Three weeks ago. GORDO:What do you need—a fucking blueprint?

Or is it that I think too much?

her] mind blackens. The blackness is not a thought, but if it could be pressed into a thought, if a chemical from a dropper could be dripped onto it causing its color and essence to become visible, it would take the shape of this sentence: Why does no one want me?

I couldn't see his face, because the light came in from behind him and he was in shadow, and he said, I am Picasso. And I said, Well, so what?