Quotes About Questioning

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society's values, can force it to change.

To quote from Le Délabrement de l'Occident of Cornelius Castoriadis, An autonomous society, a truly democratic society, is a society which questions everything that is pre-given and by the same token liberates the creation of new meanings.

Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.

What destruction have I been blessed by?

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.

compassion, skepticism, and uncertainty rather than on dogma

By announcing what we are about to show, showing it, and then clamming up until the first questions are asked, we can help clients to deal with the new and shocking revelation we've placed in front of them. And remember, it's always shocking—it's never what they expected.

The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.

established views have frequently emerged not through a process of faultless reasoning, but through centuries of intellectual muddle. There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are.

The motor of our ingenuity is the question 'Does it have to be like this?', from which arise political reforms, scientific developments, improved relationships, better books.

However disgruntled or puzzled a social hierarchy may leave us feeling, we are apt to go along with it on the resigned assumption that it is too entrenched and must be too well founded to be questioned. We are led to believe, in other words, that communities and the principles underpinning them are, practically speaking, immutable— even, somehow, natural.

Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.

Shortly after her older brother died, Chloe (who had just celebrated her eighth birthday) went through a deeply philosophical stage. I began to question everything, she told me, I had to figure out what death was, that's enough to turn anyone into a philosopher. Chloe would put her hand over her eyes and tell the family her brother was still alive because she could see him in her mind just as well as she could see them.

If we refrain from questioning the status quo, it is – aside from the weather and the size of our cities – primarily because we associate what is popular with what is right. The

I lost the ability to consider the question of predestination with necessary scepticism.

Archbishop. Why do I never read the lesson?" "I beg your pardon, ma'am?" "In church. Everybody else gets to read and one never does. It's not laid down, is it? It's not off-limits?" "Not that I'm aware, ma'am." "Good. Well in that case I'm going to start. Leviticus, here I come. Goodnight." The archbishop shook his head and went back to Strictly Come Dancing.

He asked whether I had any trouble with my stomach. I hadn't, but the question was alarming...more widespread than I'd imagined...What in fact the doctor was asking was whether I had a delicate stomach.

The trouble with computers, she thought, was that they had no intuitive senses. Only deductive ones. You had to ask the right question.

Something happened when you looked in the mirror together. You asked it, as always, a question, and you asked each other something too; and the space, shadowy but glossy, the further room in which you found yourself, as if on a stage, vibrated with ironies and sentimental admissions.

the music expressed life and explained it and left you having to ask again.

Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal?

The central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history.

Crazed with helplessness, I cursed God and wept, wondering if He wept also. But then, what use are His tears, if His help was denied me?

Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation. I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.