Quotes About Inquiry

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.

When I write, I tend to tap into this human wondering vibe that could come off negative, but it's really not.

Tiger Woods is someone I'd like to ask questions of. I'm fascinated to know about his life - everything he goes through, is he happy being Tiger Woods?

During my first semester of college, I raised my hand in a class and asked the professor to define a word I didn't know. The word was holocaust, and I had to ask because, until that moment, I had never heard of it.

It's too many questions about what I'm going to do, why I'm retiring, and this and that. So I answer the same question, I don't know, a thousand times.

I'm an essayist. And this is a genre that has existed for a few thousand years. Ever heard of Cicero? So these rules that I'm working under are not mine but rather were established by writers who recognized the difference between the hard research of journalism and the kind of inquiry of mind that characterizes the essay.

For some reason, there are political forces that somehow feel threatened by honest inquiry. How can you be threatened by wanting to know the facts?

The British Museum was founded with a civic purpose: to allow the citizen, through reasoned inquiry and comparison, to resist the certainties that endanger free society and are still among the greatest threats to our liberty.

Colleges have to be about discovering what we don't yet know and that process will come to a screeching halt if we are leveling threats of bias over the way people phrase things.

The question I always get is, Why didn't you throw Dr. Smith off the Jupiter? I get that all the time.

I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That's the magic when you read or hear something wonderful - there's no one that has all the answers.

Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?

The main battle is to make people realise that doubt is important. Doubt is good. The 'don't know' answer sometimes is the box you should tick, and it's about not being scared about that fact. Even the greatest minds don't know everything.

What and why were never questions for me. How was the only question.

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.

Believe nothing. Try everything.

I'm wondering what if. What if the football hadn't gone over the wall. What if Hector had never gone looking for it. What if he hadn't kept the dark secret to himself. What if . . . Then I suppose I would be telling myself another story. You see, the what ifs are as boundless as the stars.

All these questions and many more besides only occurred to me much, much later when there was no one left to ask.

faith without doubt is addiction

To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.

Somebody asked me if I am looking for something. I am looking for everything

Just as math is more than a collection of theorems, history is more than a collection of facts. It's an intellectual enterprise that requires piecing together a cogent and accurate story from partial scraps of faded words. And the process never ends. Its destination leads to a new beginning. True historical inquiry must end where it begins: with a question mark.

Having Jude is like having a dictionary the size of a man beside me. I open him up and ask him all sorts of questions.