Quotes About Questioning

Faith before doubt: it's about correct beliefs. Faith after doubt: it's about revolutionary love.

You're not going to arrest me or anything, are you?" "No.

My best teachers were not the ones who knew all the answers, but those who were deeply excited by questions they couldn't answer.

the Nobel Prize–winning particle physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi greeted the discovery of the muon with a less than enthusiastic Who ordered that? Nevertheless, there it was. And more was to follow.

Why look for meaning where there is none? Would you follow a path you know leads nowhere? —Query of the Mentat School

Any training school for free citizens must begin by teaching distrust, not trust. It must teach questioning, not acceptance of stock answers.

Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt.

Maybe God is nothing more than another villain—the biggest villain of them all. Maybe

am not a consultant; I am an insurant. I don't tell people what to do. I just ask them the hard questions that they need to answer to decide what to do for themselves.

Inquiry doesn't have a motive. It doesn't teach a philosophy. It's just investigation.

The Work is merely four questions; it's not even a thing. It has no motive, no strings. It's nothing without your answers. These four questions will join any program you've got and enhance it. Any religion you have—they'll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy. And they'll burn up anything that isn't true for you. They'll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting.

When you ask "Is it true?" for example, you may not really want to know. It could be that you'd rather stay with your statement than dive into the unknown. Blocking means rushing the process and answering with your conscious mind before the gentler polarity of mind (I call it "the heart") can answer.

1. Is it true? 2. Can you absolutely know that it's true? 3. How do you react when you believe that thought? 4. Who would you be without the thought?

Is it true?        2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?        3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?        4. Who would you be without the thought?

Why in the world are you a Republican?

She asked me if Christmas was a particularly tense time and whether my father had ever hit my mother while trimming the tree. I couldn't remember anything like that happening, and although it seemed possible, I was suspicious when she asked me if my father had ever thrust the silver star at my mother to deliberately pierce her hand. I said no and she said the bastard and we both looked a little confused. (p. 9)

Who am I supposed to be again? Just be yourself. But who am I?

Jim Tile was questioning Augustine about the skulls on the wall. "Cuban voodoo?

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths.

Gullibility kills.

If we're absolutely sure that our beliefs are right, and those of others wrong; that we are motivated by good, and others by evil; that the King of the Universe speaks to us, and not to adherents of very different faiths; that it is wicked to challenge conventional doctrines or to ask searching questions; that our main job is to believe and obey—then the witch mania will recur in its infinite variations down to the time of the last man.

I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgements.

The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right?

Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom. LATIN PROVERB