Quotes About Inquiry

Questions can be more dangerous than swords.

From the point of view of this relatively new and inchoate academic presence, then, the gay studies movement, what distinctive soundings are to be reached by posing the question our way—and staying for an answer? Let's see how it sounds. Has there ever been a gay Socrates? Has there ever been a gay Shakespeare? Has there ever been a gay Proust? Does the Pope wear a dress? If these questions startle, it is not least as tautologies.

come from a place of curiousity, rather than from judgment

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.

De strigis vero, quae non sunt, nulla quaestio fiat (Sobre las brujas, ya que no existen, no se harán indagaciones).

El caracol pregunta: "¿Pero qué son las estrellas?" "Son luces que llevamos sobre nuestra cabeza". "Nosotras no las vemos", las hormigas comentan. Y el caracol: "Mi vista sólo alcanza a las hierbas.

Creo que mi especialidad está en escribir lo que no sé, pues no creo que solamente se debe escribir lo que se sabe. Y desconfío de los que en estas cuestiones pretenden saber mucho, claro y seguro.

The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.

What is desperately needed ... is the skepticism and the sense of history that a liberal arts education provides.

Regarding the fundamental investigations of mathematics, there is no final ending... no first beginning.

The silliest questions are those seeking to be "deep" and/or "intelligent" and that, in fact, are absolutely hollow and stupid. For example: "What do you think is the situation of the Latin American intellectual?" What can I say in response to such generalities? My answer: "I do not know, nor do I care to know.

Answers do not matter so much as questions, said the Good Fairy. A good question is very hard to answer. The better the question the harder the answer. There is no answer at all to a very good question.

Demand the lead, saying, "Infinite spirit, reveal to me the way, let me know if there is anything for me to do." The answer will come through

We cannot wonder enough at the facility with which men resign themselves to continue ignorant of what it is most important that they should know; and we may be certain that such ignorance is incorrigible in those who venture to proclaim this axiom: There are no absolute principles.

So, having dried my tear-swollen eyelids, I take up my pen to inquire of you, are you alive or did you die? If you are dead, please let me know, and I will tell the cook, for ever since she heard about it she has been saying her prayers.

There may be questions still unanswered, but that means that we need science, not that science is useless [...] There are fish in the sea as yet uncaught, but that does not mean that fishing nets have failed and should be thrown aside.

Heaven is full of answers for which nobody ever bothered to ask.

Life would be so much easier if we had the courage to ask the questions we fear the most.

The real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.

The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.

People are always asking me about eskimos, but there are no eskimos in Iceland.

How you doin? how you doin?

asking discerning questions is a key directoral skill, and the wish to ask them a necessary attitude.

until the end of the world,all whys will be answered,but now,you can only ask!